TELEVISION is constantly looking for fresh ways to portray the law. Take The Innocence Project, a forthcoming series on BBC One. In the pre-screening publicity we are told that it “is about the law — but not about lawyers or the police”, it is “about young people with fire in their bellies and a healthy disregard for authority”.

The series is based on real projects at universities across England and Wales, including Manchester, Bristol and Cardiff, which recruit aspiring law students to research and prepare cases for presentation to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. None of this is revolutionary — the Free Representation Unit and other pro bono initiatives have been doing this for years. Nevertheless, the characters in The Innocence Project bound around like teenagers at a school disco, spouting chapters of Archbold almost verbatim. The show is a cross between Hollyoaks and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with first-year law students displaying a wealth of knowledge of the law more akin to a law lord than a student.

The series is written by Oliver Brown, who describes himself as “a failed, or at least, frustrated, lawyer” who has a pessimistic view of the criminal justice system. “Ideas that used to be central to English criminal law, such as double jeopardy, the right to silence and even the premise of innocent until proven guilty, have all suffered in the past 15 years,” he argues.

The programme, to be broadcast in eight parts, takes on issues ranging from wrongful murder convictions, drug dealing, jury tampering and an attempt to prove the innocence of a woman who was executed as a witch 300 years ago. The principle of The Innocence Project is attracting a great deal of interest if the number of university lecturers at the screening is anything to go by.