For anyone who gets home from a long day of billable hours with a craving for even more law, a new BBC1 drama began last week. Silk, written by ex-barrister and Kavanagh QC creator Peter Moffat, focuses on two rival barristers seeking to be appointed as QCs. Martha Costello (pictured, second left), played by Shameless star Maxine Peake, is a straight-talking, idealistic defence barrister who comes out with statements like: ‘Innocent until proven guilty. Four words to live by.’ After getting a nasty villain acquitted of robbing a Normandy veteran in his own home, Costello tells her very green pupil: ‘Two things are true. Gary Rush [the acquitted robber, who had been fitted up by the police, but who we are given to understand was guilty] is a horrible man, and it is right that he gets off.’

Pitted against her is Clive Reader (Rupert Penry-Jones of Spooks fame), who epitomises the bar’s classic public schoolboy image. Their senior clerk Billy is alive to the odds of both taking silk, commenting: ‘It’s still 12 male QCs to every Doris.’ The first episode was highly watchable and a not wholly unrealistic view of life at the criminal bar, combined with a sub-plot about two pupils fighting it out for a single tenancy. Overall, the bar comes out of it quite well, save for some class A drug snorting and the rather implausible theft of a wig and gown by a pupil.

Solicitors come off somewhat less favourably; the main solicitor character is an arrogant senior partner who publicly shouts down Costello over her performance in court, and storms out of a chambers party smashing a flower vase. Silk is aired on Tuesdays at 9pm.