Following the law
With recent credits on dramas including Time and Unforgivable, Jeanette Ashmole details her journey from criminal barrister to TV legal consultant, her partnership with writer Jimmy McGovern and how she’s acting on her own screenwriting ambitions.
After more than two decades as a criminal barrister, Jeanette Ashmole is now using her extensive courtroom experience in a new career as a legal consultant on several high-profile British dramas.
“The criminal justice system at the moment, it’s on its knees,” she tells DQ. “There are just not enough judges. There are not enough courts open anymore. What I say to my colleagues is I love coming to set and doing a court scene because, for the first time ever, the defendant turns up on time.
“They haven’t run out of staff or the prisoner hasn’t refused to leave his cell. Things get cracking straight away. There’s not loads of legal argument, the ceilings are not falling through, the toilets are working. Everything runs very smoothly, unlike the real criminal justice system. Give me a TV set any day.”
Ashmole’s first TV gig as a legal consultant was on the second season of Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama Time, after she was put forward by the show’s co-writer Helen Black. The pair became firm friends after Black began developing a TV project based on Ashmole’s life – an orphan at the age of nine, she left foster care at 16, joined the police force and had a baby before studying law at university and later went on a TV gameshow to win the money she needed to study for the bar. She subsequently worked for the Border Force and then as a criminal investigator before qualifying as a barrister.
Though plans for the biopic didn’t progress, Ashmole continued to answer Black’s questions for her other development projects. “Then when she got the gig with Jimmy McGovern, Jimmy said, ‘Well, we could do with a legal advisor,’ and I was the first person they asked. I just really loved it,” she says.
No two shows are the same for Ashmole, who might be involved in reading early script drafts or just called to set the day before a key courtroom scene.
“On Time, I was involved right from the start. When they were outlining the stories, when they were deciding how long they needed certain characters to go in prison for and what ideally they wanted them to be in prison for and their backstories, I had to advise on whether all that was going to be authentic and whether it was correct.”
One example is Jodie Whittaker’s character Orla, a cash-strapped single mum who is jailed for “fiddling the lecky.” But in the real world, one isn’t likely to be sent to prison only for stealing electricity, especially without any previous convictions.
“At the time, there was this cost-of-living crisis and Jimmy was adamant that he wanted to show this kind of character where all they’re doing is trying to survive so they’re almost committing crime because they’ve got no other option,” Ashmole says. “I had to find a way where we could make it more authentic, so you’ll notice when Jodie is first being checked into the prison, the prison officer says to her, ‘Oh, you don’t go to prison for fiddling the lecky.’ And then she goes, ‘Oh, aggravating factors or something.’
“I put that in so if anybody ever questioned it, in the background she’d done it before or she wasn’t just fiddling her own electric meter. She was fiddling the flat next door, which was empty, and she’d involved a dodgy electrician to help her. She involved somebody else in the criminality and also made that flat next door quite unsafe. So there was more backstory for the judge to say, ‘This is quite serious actually, so the only option is prison.’”
Another character Orla meets behind bars is Tamara Lawrance’s Abi, who is sent to prison for murdering her own baby. Ashmole had to advise on how to ensure the sentence was definitely for murder, which meant making the baby a certain age so that laws relating to infanticide – where a mother is charged with manslaughter for causing the death of their baby under the age of 12 months due to mental health conditions – did not apply.
“We had to decide what was authentic and how she would be done for murder and not manslaughter, so all of those things go on in the background,” Ashmole says. “I was involved right from the start to build all those character backgrounds and make sure it worked, as well as reading scripts, giving notes and working with the costume department.”
She even makes a cameo appearance in the series in once scene featuring Bella Ramsey’s Kelsey. “We needed an extra barrister because there were two defendants. I was like, ‘Well, I’m on set anyway. I’ll bring my wig and gown.’ I’ve done that a few times.”
Since then, Ashmole’s TV career has “snowballed,” leading to work on series including Playing Nice, Toxic Town, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, The Gold S2 and Grace. She is also a continuing advisor on ITV soap Coronation Street.
Since Time, she has also reunited with McGovern on his BBC single drama Unforgivable (pictured top), which debuted last week. In addition, she has been involved in the making of upcoming ITV factual drama I Fought The Law and BBC drama The Cage – both starring Sheridan Smith.
Sometimes her work might just be fact-checking the title given to a judge where, in standard Crown Court hearings, they would be addressed as ‘Your Honour’ rather than ‘My Lord’ or ‘My Lady,’ which is applicable at London’s Old Bailey or the High Court.
“Something like that, I don’t need to check. I don’t need to research it because it just jumps out at me,” Ashmole says. “Some things I might think, ‘Well, I’m not sure about this’ and I will go ahead and double-check it, or I might even call one of my barrister mates and say, ‘If this would be the scenario, is that right?’
“But what I think I’m good at is if they have an idea and it doesn’t work, I’m able to give them ideas for how they can fix it, whereas feedback I’ve had from a lot of producers is when they’ve worked with people in the past , because they don’t get TV and how TV works, they’re just like, ‘Well, that would never happen. So change it,’ without actually giving any resolution to the problem.”
When it comes to balancing authenticity with the creative licence often afforded to television series, Ashmole always sets out to explain what would happen in real life. Then it’s up to the writer or producer to act upon her advice or not.
One of her biggest bugbears is how frequently dramas reveal a defendant’s previous convictions during a court hearing – something that rarely happens and is often argued against in real life.
“Unless somebody is on trial for a crime that is exactly the same as one they’ve committed before, generally the rule is that the jury will not be told about a suspect’s previous convictions,” she explains. “There’s a whole legal argument about it. The prosecution, if they want to rely upon [previous convictions], have to make a thorough application. They have to prove why the jury should be told about it.
“Somebody might be up for sexual assault, and five years ago they have got [a conviction for] stabbing somebody. That’s never going to go in because it’s too prejudicial. How are they going to get a fair trial? You’re trying to focus on whether you think he’s sexually abused this girl but you’re told, ‘Actually, he stabbed somebody five years ago and he went to prison.’ It’s not really relevant to whether he committed the sexual offence.”
But in an effort to make TV dramas even more dramatic, those rules might be ignored. “You want this lovely cross-examination barrister to say, ‘You are a naughty boy and you’ve done this in the past,’ so a lot of the time it has to go in,” Ashmole continues. “People don’t realise that, actually, 99% of the time the jury isn’t told if the person has previous convictions or not until after [the verdict].
“Things like that are really quite important, but you have to bear in mind that you’re making TV and you do want the drama and you do want that dialogue. It’s about getting that fine balance.”
Unforgivable tells the story of a family in Liverpool that is coming to terms with the aftermath of a case of sexual abuse by one of its members. As the show nears its conclusion, it features a court case where another alleged abuser is standing in the dock.
In scenes where the alleged victim is being cross-examined, Ashmole suggested McGovern use closed-ended questions to make the dialogue more dramatic. “For instance, changing ‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’ to ‘That’s a lie, isn’t it?’ means you’re wanting them to say yes or no,” Ashmole explains. “You’re closing down on them. The moment you ask them an open-ended question, you’ve got no idea what they’re going to say.
“Jimmy could very easily go, ‘Well, I know what I’m doing. I’ve been writing all the time and I’ve got all these awards,’ but he doesn’t. He’s brilliant at taking advice.”
Ashmole was also on set during filming of the feature-length drama, making sure the court scene played out as it would in real life, the costumes were correct and the judge was wearing the right wig.
“Probably the average person is like, ‘Well, does that really matter?’ But it does matter because everybody puts their heart and soul into making these shows. Jimmy’s definitely put his heart and soul into this show. It’s going to be a very hard-hitting show and it’s bloody brave of him to have written it. It’s very brave of [producer] LA Productions and the BBC to have gone with it because this is going to be quite controversial, so everybody’s putting their head on the line. So why wouldn’t you want to do everything possible to make it as authentic as you can? That’s where I come in.”
With the support of Black, Ashmole has now started developing her own projects and writing original scripts, securing an agent in the process. Though she’s avoiding a “full-on legal” drama at the moment, most of her work naturally involves policing.
When she reflects on her shift into television, Ashmole recognises she has come full circle after once attending theatre school and dreaming of becoming an actor.
“I was quite interested in the creative industry so it almost feels as though I’ve come back round to it, like it was always perhaps meant to be,” she says. “It is a bit strange, because I’m not practicing [law] at all now. I’m not taking on new cases because I got an agent for screenwriting, so I’m working on my own scripts and pitches.
“But people say to me, ‘Why would you want to give up the law?’ It’s because I finally feel like I’m actually where I’m meant to be. I’m just using my experience and my knowledge in a different way.”
RELATED CONTENT
BBC sets launch for Unforgivable
TRAILER: Anna Friel and Bobby Schofield star in Unforgivable, the new BBC drama from Jimmy McGovern (Time) that is set to debut this Thursday, July 24.
New Wives tale
The Wives creator Helen Black recalls the journey to making her first original series, explaining how the drama champions female camaraderie and why writers should “hold their nerve.”
Inside story
BBC Studios Drama producers Michael Parke and Andrew Morrissey reflect on creating the second season of the BBC’s award-winning drama Time, which tells a new story of survival and community behind bars – but this time in a women’s prison.
tagged in: BBC, Jeanette Ashmole, Jimmy McGovern, LA Productions, Time, Unforgivable