Defending the Guilty: This legal comedy is overstuffed with stereotypes

There’s quite a lot of architecture in the first episode of legal comedy Defending The Guilty. Not as in buildings, though it has those; courtrooms and corridors mostly. It’s the outlines of the programmes that this adaptation of Alex McBride’s 2010 memoir would like to be which jut out, making it not quite as funny as it thinks it is.

And the cynicism, which is supposed to be equal before the law, mocking both the lawyers and the criminals, emerges instead as a kind of nagging insecurity about class, in which the show’s fulcrum is an indecisive, half-bewildered middle way.

But let’s not condemn it entirely. The pilot episode, which screens tonight (followed online by the rest of the series), focuses on fresh-faced Will (Will Sharpe), three months into his training, and one of four candidates for a job at a legal chambers. Will is enthusiastic, boyishly 29 and a bit naive, which helps because people have to keep explaining the legal system to him. It’s not about being right, or getting to the truth, he is told, it’s about winning.

Will’s three rivals inhabit alternate stereotypes, which are summed up in the office sweepstake, Tenancy Deathball, which offers odds on their chances of getting the job.

Will is nicknamed DJ Stupid, on account of his headphones and the indie shag of his hair. The studenty soundtrack comes from Will’s oversize cans: Belle and Sebastian, The Drums, Alt-J. The other candidates are Angry Chav (who is not posh), Hot Robot (thick and posh), and Lanky Poison T*** (exceptionally posh, venal, very thick). The two women are sketchy. The male Lanky Poison T*** is drawn in indelible jumbo marker.

The criminals are a funny lot, on account of not being middle class. There is a murderous old lag, and a young woman with surprising literary knowledge (imagine!) They are not to be trusted.

Will is an agreeable fish out of water, breathless, but saveable. The best character is Will’s pupil mistress, Caroline (Katherine Parkinson), who gets the good lines, and delivers them in the style of Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It, because that’s the comedy register she inhabits. “I want you to get off,” she tells the truthless oaf she is defending, “but we’ve got fewer defence points than I have viable eggs.”

Caroline also insists on being addressed by Will as “Mummy”. Possibly it’s a theme. By episode two, she discovers that she is unpopular with her colleagues, and must try to be nice in order to become a QC. She also has a fondness for pastries. Does it work? Just about. That Thick Of It cynicism is bit overripe these days, and needs to be handled with care.