The Escape Artist: Andrew Jefferies

How did you get involved with the project?

The producers contacted a friend of mine who works in a high-profile commercial legal firm because they were after a criminal expert. It just so happened that I got the recommendation through her and now here I am.

What sort of courtroom mechanics did you advise on in particular?

There was a scene in one of the trials where they go and see the judge in chambers and there was a question about how formal it was meant to be. Specifically, people asked if the lawyers would wear wigs and if the judge would wear his wig. I had a quick chat with Brian, and told him that wigs would be worn invariably, however, if you go into the room and the judge isn’t wearing his wig then you quickly take yours off. Essentially, you mirror what the judge does. I think what they ended up doing for that scene was having them go into the room with their wigs on, but when the judge removed his wig they then followed suit. So there was a nice little moment of what would actually happen in real life. Lawyers will get that.

How early on did you start working with David?

David had written the first script in its entirety and had the outlines for parts two and three. Once the script came for part one, it was literally a case of going through it and either smiling and enjoying it or crossing bits out and correcting them. There would normally be lengthy email exchanges between David and I that could be regarding anything from changing just a single word to changing entire scenes in order to make it a more realistic setting in an English courtroom.

Can you tell us about getting the balance right between the drama and having the correct legal elements as well?

David had got most of the legal things accurate, it was just fine tuning. It was surprising how true he’d been in terms of what would and wouldn’t have gone on in an English courtroom. I think on the whole, having seen the scripts he’s limited the poetic license he might otherwise have opted to go for. He’s just tried to jig things around so that the excitement of the programme is still there but kept it legally accurate. Some programmes tend to have too much dramatic license and tend to veer away from what would really happen. I think he’s kept it quite true.

Would you say there’s a theatrical element to criminal law?

Yes definitely. The closing speech is pure theatre, you want to take the jury on a rollercoaster of emotions and bring to their minds your own points. That is theatre. Obviously, it’s a slightly artificial setting and there are certain limits to what you can and can’t do, but essentially it’s a form of theatre.

When you were on set what were you doing?

I was just making sure they got things right. We were filming the sketch artist in Kingston and they’d given her a pad and some pencils and at that point I had to step in and say ‘no that doesn’t happen.’ Actually what happens is that they take notes and then draw it when they get out of the courtroom, they draw it all from memory 20 minutes afterwards. Things like that did crop up and I would step in.

Did you ever look at the script in a way other than the technical side of things?

No, I deliberately didn’t get involved in the story that David wanted to tell. It was really just the legal language or the scenarios. There were some scenes that I knew he rewrote because of legal issues. Sometimes, no matter how you try to make allowances for poetic license, it just doesn’t work, and this was the case in this particular circumstance. So in the end he adjusted certain parts in order to maintain the authenticity. I wouldn’t dream of telling David what to do for the non-legal storyline!

Amongst your community do you watch a lot of legal dramas?

Yes. Lawyers definitely watch them. Things get discussed. More often than not the bad things will get discussed because they’re the reason we scream at the television!

Foyle is obviously very well acquainted with the law. Are there many defendants like this?

There are lots of accused people who have time on their hands and they will often read ‘Archbold,’ which is just a very big book that we use everyday and has most of the law in it. What then happens is you’ll often hear certain phrases from some of your clients like ‘but what about the case of Smith?’ Of course we would think ‘how on earth do you know that’ when of course it’s because they’ve been reading the cases in the Archbold. This idea demonstrates why it’s hardly surprising that Foyle has an awareness of the law. To me he seems like someone who is highly intelligent so there is no reason why he wouldn’t do his own research or be aware of the issues he needs to address in putting his case forward.

Are you looking forward to watching it?

I saw the mock trailer, and it looked absolutely fantastic. It’s very exciting. I’ve only ever seen it from the perspective of being on set with loads of cameras around. Obviously, on set it feels quite artificial there’s no atmosphere. I never realised that filming was such a convoluted process with so many snippets. Therefore you never get a feel for whether it’s good bad or indifferent because you’re only seeing four lines for a particular dialogue. So when I saw the trailer with lots of different bits put together it was a real eye opener, I just thought ‘wow.’