Garrow the Lawyer

The first season of Garrow's Law, the popular BBC series based on the life of eighteenth century barrister William Garrow, is now available in the U.S. U.K. fans can obtain both season 1 and season 2.

More about lawyer Garrow's brilliant career here in an article from the Daily Mail, which notes,

Garrow was the Robin Hood of the courtroom - a poor boy who had worked his way up and was now determined that the penniless, the ignorant and the weak would no longer be tried by corrupt officials and framed for crimes they did not commit. It was Garrow who coined the phrase 'innocent until proven guilty'. But the extraordinary story of the young barrister, who became the celebrity of his day, might have been confined to the annals of history had it not been for the publication of Old Bailey trials from 1674 to 1913. When these transcripts were put online for the first time in 2008, dozens of television production companies fell upon them, scouring the court reports to find possible dramatic spin-offs. It was researchers for TwentyTwenty Television who came across Garrow's incredible courtroom performances, and spotted a potential hero from the past who could be immortalised in a television drama. The BBC eagerly agreed, and the project was handed to 51-year-old Tony Marchant, the award-winning writer behind Holding On and The Mark Of Cain.

Clive Anderson of the Telegraph discusses Garrow here. Here's a link to the Garrow Society. Also of interest: The Old Bailey Online, an immense project which allows access to information about nearly 200,000 trial held at the criminal court. John Hostetler and Richard Braby have written a biography of William Garrow, Sir William Garrow: His Life, Times, and Fight For Justice (Waterside Press, 2009).