I’ve just come across this and find that the defendant is being played by my old school drama teacher! 😊

I kept waiting for the Crown Court theme tune to kick in every now and then 😂

High class drama, a brilliant and very accurate fictional re construction of a trial. Television really had some class back then

Very good. I was surprised at the verdict.

Not the verdict I would have expected...It's a She said, He said situation...It's very dangerous to convict on uncorroborated evidence.

I am unanimously found guilty of enjoying courtroom drama.

Superb. Gripping drama from start to finish! Thank you.☺

I was pleased to see Peter McCarthy as the boyfriend. A splendid author, taken far too early. His book, McCarthy's Bar, is exceptional! Regarding the plot, I believe the crucial line occurs at 1:13:07.

Excellent courtroom drama and (no spoiler here!) a surprising verdict. The loose end in the evidence was why the woman entered her father's house via a side window when she stated that she had a front door key and she knew that her father was inside and strict about her returning after midnight - it was about about 3am, she had said. Her father had died before the trial, so he couldn't give evidence. The defence barrister didn't press that odd detail, beyond getting the explanation that it was 'habit, I suppose'. I think she was confronted about the late return by an angry father and gave the reason which we heard in court.

Brilliant defence.

@Executive Decision Thank you very much for uploading this very interesting play :)

He needed Rumpole on the defense. The judge didn’t seem particularly impartial to me, it was a question of his word against hers. The defendant was definitely guilty of poor judgement.

There are twelve members to a jury, and the verdict has to be "unanimous". However, at the end of the trial, the jury was asked, "Have ten of you come to the same decision". That is not a "unanimous" decision!

Very good. Thank you for the upload.

Thank you 🙏🏼

I keep laughing whenever Patrick Troughton said, "the Doctor".

Defence lawyers. Strange creatures then. And now.

Cant remember ever seeing a 2 door Austin 1100.

Patrick Troughton was barely recognisable in this and in my opinion was the best ever Dr Who.

He is the act off god you cannot insure against !! what a great line & so true

And yet she admitted noticing the knobs on his dashboard from a rear seat position with the light off. The verdict reminds me of the reason I left the legal profession back in 2007.

Demonstrates how recorded interviews of suspects has proved to be essential...

Not a bad play, but I did find it a bit puzzling. One side was expecting you to believe something incredible, that a young woman in a long-term relationship would have consented to sex with a stranger half an hour after an evening with her boyfriend. Plus, the accused had jumped bail without informing the court of his reasons, for which he presented no evidence. The other side failed to present an alternative scenario by asking some more questions: say, grilling the boyfriend in detail as to whether the woman was indeed a virgin at 23, had she had alcohol, had they had a row that night, what happened when she came home and was confronted by her father, and so on. And what was all that about the anti-rape charity Helen was supposed to be a member of?

Судья предвзято отнёсся к обвинению, хороший фильм, thanks🌹 very much

Did anyone notice Spencer Banks (a policeman) who played Simon Randall in the science fiction show "Timeslip"?

I found this astonishing to watch! An excellent screen play but what a cultural difference to today! Its hard to believe that this ever could have been taken seriously as a court case, though I think the result was part of its protest. Given how very few rape cases go to trial and that even fewer are won, I think it inappropriate to example a case where the woman is in the wrong. 1970's misogyny!

👍👍

Those darn Masons.

Obviously the right verdict was given by the jury. She definitely would not have wanted to stay out even later.

it all seemed a bit thin to me. Perhaps a thin script? So much detail was not examined (see many comments below). Thanks for the upload - it made me think:)

The verdict was correct, though counter-intuitive.

Mrs Armstrong was not asked for her name and address before giving evidence in court, she wasn’t asked for her occupation, the defendant had no character witness, summary was by only seen by the judge by the defendant’s barrister only, not also by the prosecution barrister, so one-sided, five years on, the case may have been a weak one to come to court, in the end, was word against word with no witnesses in the car, the just should have thrown out the case for a re trial, as the witness, Mrs Armstrong’s case may have been weak, the judge and jury after the police surgeon checking her for intercourse five years on.

Oh No

Social opinion of the times weighed against the defendant, as though women a completely defenceless when in actual fact they can be very manipulative. If I had been on the jury my verdict; not guilty. Judge was bias without doubt.

I strongly feel that it was a wrong verdict. He was innocent.

No twist, a thin plot.

Since only the accused and the alleged victim were present in the accused’s car on the night of the alleged rape, this is clearly a he said-she said case. The judge seemed to be known to be biased in favor of rape victims before this trial even started. It also seemed that the defense counsel was biased against the accused. Granted, the man’s admission to having had extramarital relationships despite being a married man, and whatever he said to the police that arrested him that they construed as a confession did not help his case. It would be also hard for any woman to say for a certainty what she would or would not do if she found herself confined to an automobile with a man intent on raping her until she is actually in that situation, as this young woman was. Even though she never mentioned that he threatened her with a knife, gun, or any other “weapon”, that doesn’t mean that he did not have something in his car that he could have fatally struck her with. She was in his car at 1 a.m. and there’s no way she could have readily seen any potential weapon. Most men can do a lot of damage to most women with just their fists. That fact alone would have been understandably intimidating to her. It is amazing the things both the accused and the alleged victim claim to remember about this event, given the five years between the time of the event and the trial. Perhaps this can, in part, be explained by both the alleged victim and the accused having access to statements they gave to loved ones, the police, and, for the victim, the records of her medical examination? In the end, I think her version of events is more plausible than his. I highly doubt that she would have acted and done the sort of things that the accused man alleges she did. The judge seemed biased in favor of the victim, but I can’t help but wonder how this might have turned out if the defense would have spent more time on the items listed below. I will say this entire thing was definitely preventable! Both of these people allowed themselves to get into a compromising situation, and it backfired legally on the man. The accused man’s English language fluency at the time of the alleged sexual assault should have been considered, and not his fluency at the time of the trial. Did this man really understand whatever customary arrest caution the police would have read to him at the time of his arrest? At the time he was arrested, having an interpreter present likely wasn’t possible. Perhaps the police who arrested this man had a bias against people of his ethnicity. Perhaps they realized, after briefly interacting with him, that he did not understand English well at all, and did not understand his legal rights in the UK, and proceeded to take advantage of this situation by arresting this man and charging him with rape. Then later in court, after the arresting officers had lots of time to plan their testimonies for whenever the case went to trial, they claimed that the accused made statements admitting guilt to the charges. I think there is a possibility that he did not and could not have made any such statements because he did not know English well enough to even be capable of formulating such statements. If, by the time of trial, he did not know the English words for “birth control” and “dashboard”, it makes me wonder how many other English words he did not know back at the time of the alleged crime. The reason for his seemingly improved English fluency by the time of the trial can be explained by his having spent the five years since the alleged crime working in a place where he was forced to use the English language every day. I think his defense counsel could have tested his English fluency in front of the judge and jury by showing him some pictures of a series of objects and asking him to tell the court the names of those objects in English. It would have been interesting to see how many of them he would have been able to name. I think the defense counsel could have questioned the alleged victim about whether or not her father knew where she had gone and who she was with the night of the rape. After all, he asked her if her father expected her home by a certain time every night (a question he seemed to already know she would answer YES to), so why not ask if the victim’s father placed any restrictions on whether or not or whom she could date while she was living under his roof? If her father knew she was seeing her boyfriend Edwin, how did her father feel about him? Did she marry Edwin before or after her father’s death? I can understand that in a county like the UK, it is probably very common for people not to own cars or have a driver’s license. But I think it would have been interesting to know if her boyfriend Edwin had a driver’s license and a car? If he had a car, why didn’t he drive her home instead of trying to hail a cab at 1:00 a.m.? At the very least, if he lacked a car of his own, he should have been concerned enough for her safety to have at least found someone he knew to give her a ride home instead of shoving her into the car of the first total stranger that stopped on the street!!! If push came to shove and no safe ride home could be found, why didn’t he have her stay at his home for the rest of the night and then hail a proper cab to take her home the next morning? Granted, she would have been in a heap of trouble with her father, but at least she wouldn’t have been raped! She said she was uneasy about riding in the accused man’s car, but why didn’t she insist on refusing to ride with him? Or was the reason for all of these things because her father did not know where she was or who she was with that night? Did her father not approve of her dating Edwin or any man at all? If her father did not know where she was or who she was with that night, what explanation would she have offered her father if he had caught her arriving home after the curfew and she hadn’t claimed to have been “raped”? Questioning the alleged victim about these things along with the questions about her undressing and dressing in the back of a small two-door car, and her arriving home without physical injuries and with all of her clothes on and intact, might have helped to further call into question the alleged victim’s honesty in the minds of the jurors and the judge. The fact that she admits to having entered her home through the side window instead of using the key to the door and she did not want to ring the doorbell because she knew she was way past the curfew time also call into question her honesty. Doctor finds no bruises, scratch marks or bleeding, but hymen stretched due to recent intercourse. Perhaps she had intercourse with her boyfriend that night, maybe? Since he frequently gave her money for mini cabs, why was her boyfriend not able to tell that the car that stopped on the street that night was not a mini cab? Since a real mini cab driver would have made sure to ask for money before driving her anywhere, the fact that the accused did not ask for cab fare should have been a clue to the boyfriend that the car he was shoving his girlfriend into was not a legitimate cab. This supports the defense counsel’s statement that the alleged victim was hitchhiking home What he did that night was totally asinine and shows negligence on his part for her safety! The man gave “an impression”!! How many other “impressionists” would he have fallen for!!!

But WAS he guilty or innocent ?

I would have said ' innocent;,

Beautiful 💝 my first impressions were right. Racism , always and pinning down the innocents.🌏

acepting a majority after 3hrs 19 min. 1 day 3hrs 19 perhaps. as for criticising the jury 'for taking so long' cheeky old bastard, judicial complaint is a possibility these days, then perhaps not.

A 23 year old virgin with a steady boyfriend in that time period of "sex, drugs & rock and roll"?

KZfaq ads every few minutes making this hard to watch.

is this what the Russell Brand trial will be like? oh i forgot the court of social media already found him guilty. no need to bother with a trial then, i guess!

A lot of the Plays were edgy or downright bonkers at times. I just liked a good all round story without the Marlon Brando mumblings or what the heck goings-on!

Just one more comment: when juries return quickly, it's probably a guilty verdict. When they stay out for a long time, there is some doubt and disagreement among jurors - therefore a not guilty verdict is likely. On this verdict: no comment!

Storytelling has several evident weaknesses, but it also depicts quite powerfully the anti immigrant prejudice entrenched in the British police and legal system. A tendency still prevalent today.

There is obvious doubt. And obvious bias.

Enjoyed it the film and was pleased on the outcome it showed the vulnerability of being a woman

perhaps the most tedious and dismaying trial "issue play" I've ever seen. litening to men pontificate about rape is a highly overrated amusement.

I have just wasted 1hr 15mins of my life watching this tosh. I felt absolutely sure there was going to be some profound revelation or dramatic twist in the tale to make this a very clever story- not one bit of it !!!! Don't waste your time

A woman is hallowed ground “Even in marriage!” Yikes. Glad that has changed.

At the end of the credits, you will see MCMLXXIX = 1979