A real departure for the Friday Night Movie strand with something that isn’t a movie made for either the cinema or the television. Instead it’s an episode of a long since demised, but for me much missed, television series.

‘Home’ is an episode of the British daytime television series ‘Crown Court’. The series took fictional criminal cases and ‘tried’ them in an equally fictitious Crown Court. Although everyone in the programme is an actor, the legal procedure was relatively accurate for the time and the ‘jury’ was made up of random members of the public who would, as a real jury would do, retire and consider a verdict based on the evidence that they had heard put in front of them by prosecution or defence counsel.

This episode is a particularly intriguing and in my opinion well acted one starring the actor Arthur English. Now Arthur English was primarily known for comic acting and became known for his part in the British TV series Are You Being Served. Some of Mr English’s comic talent comes through in his portrayal of the criminal that he plays which in this case is William Baker who give the impression that he is a lovable rogue. However in this programme Mr English plays this lovable rogue with a sense of underlying menace which is really a departure from the normal roles that he played.

At the start of the programme you may well think that Arthur English is playing this for laughs with his demeanour, his dress and his sacking of his defence counsel and his decision to defend himself against charges of Grievous Bodily Harm against a mentally deficient man whom Baker is accused of cutting with a razor blade. But, as the programme goes on, you see another side of Baker one that is jovial but it is a joviality with menace beneath the surface.

This was an excellent episode of a programme that I had forgotten how good it truly was. It’s also a programme that really needs to come back not just because it has great entertainment value but because it could go a long way into helping people understand the procedures and environment of the British criminal justice system.