Trial and Retribution

Welcome to the Trial and Retribution guide at TV.com.

Lynda La Plante presents a new way of looking at a crime drama in Trial and Retribution. Most crime dramas consist of the investigation or the trial, but the series includes the crime, investigation and the trial. The series is a gritty and serious drama that centres around the crime, its detection and the characters who are involved in the crime and investigation.

David Hayman stars as Detective Superintendent (later DCS) Mike Walker alongside Kate Buffery as Detective Inspector Pat North.In the seventh instalment of the series, North was replaced by Detective Chief Inspector Roison Connor, played by Victoria Smurfit. They investigate serious and hard-hitting crimes and the series remained popular throughout its run.

Theshow was originally made as annual one-offs up until story IX in 2005. Atenth storywas originally planned to be shown in the autumn of 2006, but in early 2006 ITV commissioned a further four stories, claiming that it was the crime drama they'd been looking for. The show washeld over and in January 2007, all five instalments were broadcast overconsecutive weeks. Due to the larger load of producing four new instalments, this was the first time in her career that La Plante had to call in other writers. For storiesXII and XIII (and continuing into future instalments) two different writers worked on storylines that La Plantehad suggested. Lynda La Plante said she was very protective over the series and its characters, and found it difficult tolet go, though the major commission was quite an achievement. A further commission of five two-parters was made in 2007, now cut to an hour per episode due to ITV's new plans for hour-long programming during weekdays.The showwasLynda La Plante's longest running series.The final stories were broadcast in early 2009,since which time La Plante has developed new detective dramas for ITV.

In 1997, Lynda La Plante won the Liverpool Echo Arts Award for best TV writerfor Trial and Retribution, and the showwas nominated for a Royal TV Society Award.

Various novels based on the series were written:- Trial and Retribution (1997), Trial and Retribution II (1998), Trial and Retribution III (1999), Trial and Retribution IV (2000), Trial and Retribution V (2002) and Trial and Retribution VI (2002). All six novels were writtenby Robin Blake.

Trial and Retributionwas made by La Plante Productions and was broadcast on the ITV network. Trial & Retribution: the Complete Collection is available on DVD.