American TV drama trumps British TV drama – it’s a well-worn but unfair cliché. It’s not that British drama is necessarily bad – some of it is very good – it’s that American drama is often better.
Compare and contrast Silk (BBC One) and The Good Wife (CBS/More4). Neither show is a blockbuster. Both are law/political office dramas: a staple of TV networks down the years, from the dog days of Judge John Deed all the way back to the glories of Rumpole. Viewers love the format of these wig and gown shows: a question is raised and resolved in every episode, while a wider, character-driven drama rumbles on for years. Each generation adds its own factors to the basic equation: Silk and The Good Wife are concerned primarily with female lawyers. At least, that’s how they began.
In the first series of Silk, Martha Costello (Maxime Peake) and Clive Reader (Rupert Penry-Jones) were competing to be appointed Queen’s Counsel, or ‘silk’ as it’s known in the trade.
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