‘THE TRIAL’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
Welcome to Series 3 of ‘The Brittas Empire’! This is where the series kicks into full swing and finds its own ground on what it wants to be. And how do we begin Series 3? Well, by putting Gordon Brittas on trial of course. Yeah! Mr. Brittas stands trial for six-fold murder and several minor counts in the story.
It was funny to see Brittas put on trial and in a courtroom outside the leisure centre. The judge is played by Harold Innocent, who’s done a number of TV and films over the years. He was even in the ‘Doctor Who’ TV story ‘The Happiness Patrol’ with Sylvester McCoy. I knew I recognised his name! 😀
There’s also Terrence Hardiman as the prosecutor during Mr. Brittas’ trial. He’s well-known for playing the Demon Headmaster in the titular BBC children’s TV series. He’s also been in ‘Doctor Who’ in the TV story ‘The Beast Below’ with Matt Smith and the Big Finish audio adaptation of ‘The English Way of Death’ with Tom Baker.
As the trial ensures, many of the leisure centre staff, including Laura, Gavin, Tim, Julie, Linda and Carole as well as Brittas’ wife Helen testify as to what happened on the day when the murder incident occurred. I did think Carole was being quite malicious to Brittas in her testimony at the trial.
Throughout the episode, we’re given flashbacks as to what happened. It’s revealed that one of Gordon’s enemies put glue on various objects that he would touch to ruin his day. How that person was able to put glue on various objects without Brittas knowing is never explained in the TV episode.
Brittas also does his lavatory inspections that are merciless and meticulous. In the process, he finds keys to lockers behind each toilet. Each locker contains a briefcase. One is filled with £650,000 and another is a bag full of drugs called amphetamines. Helen took a liking to those drugs in the episode.
It seems Brittas took the suitcases to his office instead of the lost property box, which puts his case during the trial into question. Brittas also gets into trouble when his hands are stuck to a chainsaw. This causes the body count to rise after a gun shoot-out occurs and he injures old-age pensioners. 😀
It does seem like the evidence is against Mr. Brittas and he’ll never get out of jail. Thankfully, one of his good deeds pays off as the man responsible for the suitcases in the lockers confesses in the courtroom. It does not make the judge and the prosecutor happy as they wanted to ruin Mr. Brittas.
‘The Trial’ rating – 8/10
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Hi Tim,
This was such a good episode. It was a case of everything that could have gone wrong, going horribly and catastrophically wrong. Also, the prosecutor and judge are pretty corrupt by the looks of things. I understood their frustration, but they were very cruel in trying to get Brittas locked up. There’s a subtlety in the show’s writing that whilst Gordon Brittas may be incompetent and no voice of reason, I don’t think many characters are written to be fully reasonable, except Laura, amongst some minor/guest characters.
I looked on IMDB trivia again, and ‘the man responsible for the suitcases’ is Perry Fenwick as Eddie Baron.
Xavier
My mistake. It’s Barett, not Baron.
Xavier
Hi Xavier,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on ‘The Trial’ episode of ‘The Brittas Empire’.
Yes, even when Gordon has a good intentions and ends up being incompetent, there’s no denying that some of the regular cast and guest characters can be cruel and mean-spirited at times. I’m glad you find that a subtle thing in this episode, especially concerning the judge and prosecutor characters. I’d forgotten Harold Innocent was in this episode and I revisited ‘The Happiness Patrol’ on BBC iPlayer recently. It’s also amazing to find Terrence Hardiman in this episode, having seen and heard him in ‘Doctor Who’ as well as seen him in ‘The Demon Headmaster’. Thanks for mentioning that Perry Fenwick played Eddie Barrett in the episode.
Best wishes,
Tim 🙂