This begins in the first episode of the season, Rumpole and the Genuine Article, which sees Guthrie Featherstone QC MP (Bowles) promoted to a new role in the series as a comedically incompetent judge. Naturally his first case involves Rumpole, defending someone accused of art forgery. When "Featherstone J" boasts that his "judicial eye" can always tell when someone is lying to him, such as a witness, Rumpole takes mischievous delight in proving him wrong.
The best episode of the season is the format-breaker away from London, by now well established as a once-a-season occurrence. In Rumpole and the Golden Thread, Rumpole travels to a former British colony in Africa (a made up one, but perhaps somewhat akin to Ghana or Zimbabwe, alas I'm not knowledgeable enough to say which might be the closest real-world comparison) to defend an opposition politician accused of murder. The stakes feel higher than ever in this case, not only because this country has no juries at its trials, only a single judge appointed by the president-dictator with no love for the accused, but mainly because it still has the death penalty.
It turns out the accused wants to be found guilty, because he thinks a politically motivated guilty verdict will provoke a revolution in the country, and is horrified when Rumpole gets him acquitted by exposing his affair with a woman of a different tribe in order to give him an alibi - with the result that he is politically discredited. This might have been better if the preceding episode had not also featured an accused who secretly wanted Rumpole to fail - at this point the series is in real danger of over-using that particular trope.
What saves the episode and makes it one of the very best of the series is the coda when Rumpole is himself arrested, following a misunderstanding by officials over the meaning of the phrase "doing a murder" - they think this means Rumpole is involved in a conspiracy to have someone killed, when really this is just barrister-speak for participating in a murder trial.
But it means that we finally see made explicit what had until now only been hinted at - that Rumpole's motivation for being a barrister and always acting for the defence (never the prosecution) is based on his own fear of being arrested, convicted and imprisoned. Presumably this comes from his formative experiences at boarding school - experiences that Rumpole has compared to prison ever since the first episode.
Rumpole and the Old Boy Net is a turning point for the series, introducing as it does a character who will be a mainstay from this point on. The replacement for Guthrie Featherstone as head of Rumpole's barrister chambers, and with it the role of regular comic foil for Rumpole, is the pious and pompous Sam Ballard QC, wonderfully played by Peter "Vincent Stoat" Blythe. He is perhaps a bit more of a match for Rumpole than Featherstone or Erskine-Brown, at least at first, although we only see them opposite each other in court once in this season, in this his first appearance.
Memorable one-off guest actors we see in this season include Vernon Dobtcheff as an art expert, not reprising his role as a barrister from the original Play for Today. Rumpole and the Golden Thread featured Joseph Marcell (still probably best known today for being in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) and High Quarshie (Solomon in Doctor Who's Daleks in Manhattan - an actor of his quality and that was the role they wasted him in?). Rumpole and the Old Boy Net saw Jack "Professor Travers" Watling appear as a witness. Meanwhile on the bench, guest judges of note included two more memorable appearances by Bill Fraser as Judge Bullingham, and one by Peter "Saruman" Howell.
Roland Culver (best known to me for playing Augustus in The Caesars) was another guest judge in the fifth episode, Rumpole and the Sporting Life. Unusually for Rumpole of the Bailey, this judge is portrayed sympathetically - he is a judge who, we are told, once passed a death sentence on someone who it later (too late!) turned out was innocent (almost certainly based on a real case) and so carries this on his conscience when judging murder trials. This episode is also notable for featuring Andrew "Jarvik" Burt as an unlikable murder victim.
The final episode of the season, Rumpole and the Last Resort, again tries to wrongfoot viewers into thinking this could be the very final end for Rumpole when he appears to collapse and die in Judge Bullingham's court. This is then revealed to be a ruse on his part to draw out an elusive rogue solicitor who had been cheating the widows of recently deceased barristers out of their money.
In addition to an incongruous appearance from Jim "Bishop Brennan" Norton as a private detective, this episode also features Terence Rigby (Roy "Soldier" Bland in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) as the dodgy solicitor in question, who meets his match when he tries his con on Rumpole's supposed widow, She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Their confrontation is a great scene, and makes for a fine send-off for Peggy Thorpe-Bates, since this would end up being her last time playing Hilda Rumpole. Of the three actresses who played Hilda on TV, Thorpe-Bates was easily the best, giving her character nuance and layers that the others could not match. In this I would compare her to Barbara Murray as the first Pamela Wilder in The Power Game, Virginia Stride as the first Miss Belman in The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder, or Stephen Greif as the first Space Commander Travis.
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