Mute of Malice

Mute of Malice sets Kavanagh a problem that none of his clients has posed before. The man he defends is an army chaplain accused of killing his brother, and he will not speak. The court has found that he is mute of malice.

Wikipedia asks the obvious question. Is he simply being uncooperative, or has the trauma of service in Bosnia left him unable to speak? Prime Video's listing adds that the chaplain returned home from Bosnia before his brother was killed. The film therefore sets a barrister in a position where the usual means of defence, a conversation with the client, are not available.

On the side, Jeremy Aldermarten has trouble of his own. The judge in his case has a nervous breakdown. Nicholas Jones plays Aldermarten as the pompous barrister whom the Classic Film and TV Café describes as ambitious, and his misfortune gives the chambers its usual comic counterpoint to the main plot.

Charles Wood wrote the film, and Jack Gold directed. Wood is one of the writers whom the show dossier singles out among the series' roster, which also includes Nigel Kneale, Malcolm Bradbury and Peter Moffat. Gold went on to direct the 2001 special that closed the series. The cast includes Mac Andrews as RSM Brown, Linda Bassett as Miss Haddon QC, Anthony Calf as Miles Beddoes, Angela Down as Angela Beddoes, Roger Hammond as Dartwood and Oz Clarke as a sommelier.

Oliver Ford Davies appears as Peter Foxcott QC, the head of chambers, and John Thaw leads. The third series began with this film on Monday 3 March 1997, after a gap of nearly a year since the end of the second. Central Television made it for ITV, and there are six films in the series.

The film is the first of three on the opening disc of the BFS Video DVD release of the third series, which also holds Blood Money and Ancient History and runs to about 230 minutes in total; the extras listed in a library record include quotations on law and justice, cast profiles, a tribute to John Thaw and a feature called Kavanagh QC: the birth of a series. IMDb voters give it 7.7 out of 10.

Wikipedia describes the usual shape of the series as a client who seems likely to be convicted until a twist occurs. This film seems to alter that pattern by taking away the client's voice, and it does so in a setting, the army, that the Classic Film and TV Café says the series returned to in other cases involving military officers.

The sources read do not report whether Kavanagh gets the chaplain to speak, what happened between the brothers or what the verdict was. The account stops where they stop.