There were six episodes in the first series and the same number in the second series that aired in 1979 with an extended one-off special just before New Year 1980. The first episode of the Rumpole of the Bailey series aired in 1978 on Thames Television, the ITV regional subsidiary for London, but which was transmitted in the Scottish Highlands, Derry, and down to the Channel Islands. The initial sighting was part of the BBC’s much-lauded Play for Today series but it was the Beeb’s rival ITV that picked up the rights to a series which began three years later with Australian actor Leo McKern as the heavyweight (in more ways than one) English barrister. He first made a television appearance in the week before Christmas 1975 but wouldn’t become a familiar face on British and New Zealand screens until the 1980s. Rumpole of the Bailey was created by British writer (and former barrister and QC) John Mortimer as a defiant criminal lawyer.
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