Richard's Review:

You just can’t beat a good legal thriller.

And they don’t come much tauter and believable than this. Rob Rinder – TV’s Judge Rob Rinder, of course – brings two valuable things to the table in The Trial.

Firstly, he’s a criminal barrister by training and has real-life case experience to call upon; secondly, he’s a damn good writer and, like a KC who knows how to make a gripping opening speech, he grabs us, the jury, by the short and curlies right from the off.

We have a fatal poisoning, a lazy, conceited barrister who is deeply reluctant to take on the defence brief for the killer, and an enthusiastic junior – whose first trial this is. At first sight it looks like an open and shut case; guilty as charged.

It turns out to be anything but…

Judy's Review:

Strikingly good-looking Detective Inspector Grant Cliveden doesn’t know it yet, but today is the day he dies.

He’s a national sensation; he saved the late Queen from assassination, and documentaries about that have made him a heart-throb hero.

Today he is attending Crown Court to give evidence in a criminal trial. But as he climbs confidently – swaggeringly, even – into the witness box, his vision suddenly blurs. He stops breathing. He collapses and his world goes black – for ever. He has been poisoned.

All the evidence swiftly points to one man, serial offender Jimmy Knight. The case against him seems bomb- proof. Which is why lazy, conceited KC Jonathan Taylor-Cameron is furious at being appointed counsel for the defence. ‘It’s an absolute loser,’ he moans. ‘I’m not doing it!’ But he must – and with a totally inexperienced junior, Adam Green, at his side.

But nothing in this case is what it seems. We are set for a roller-coaster of a trial.

Enjoy the ride.