The Twelve review: How do you keep jurors off their smartphones? Lock them all up! writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

The Twelve 

Rating:

Take away the smartphone of anyone under 40 and you might as well cut off their oxygen supply. Most can’t get through a meal or even walk from front door to bus stop without constantly scrolling.

So how can any jury now be trusted to try a murder case that might run for months without Googling the defendant?

The jurors on The Twelve (ITV1), an Australian drama starring Sam Neill as a charismatic defence lawyer, are already thumbing through social media before the trial begins.

All of them are well aware that it’s forbidden. The foreman, Corrie (Pallavi Sharda), spells it out: ‘We can’t make any inquiries outside the courtroom, which means we can’t Google anything or read any media coverage on the case.’

‘How do they police that?’ shrugs one juror. That evening, several of them are obsessively searching social media and news footage, trying to do their own detective work on the defendant – Kate Lawson (Kate Mulvany), a woman accused of murdering her own 14-year-old niece and hiding the body, in a killing with dark sexual undercurrents.

This drama, first shown Down Under in 2022 (and based on a Belgian original), highlights a real problem. Thanks to our phones, millions of people are addicted to internet sleuthing. Recent mysteries such as the disappearance of the late Nicola Bulley, not to mention the sickening conspiracy theories around the illness of the Princess of Wales, show how crazed this has become.

It’s inevitable that many people on juries will be unable to resist turning true-crime detective. Shutting juries away in isolation is draconian and hardly feasible, but what alternative is there if we can’t trust them to ensure a fair trial?

Kate Mulvany as Kate Lawson in The Twelve, a new Australian drama 

That’s just one of the issues threatening to derail justice in this decidedly adult tale, with a full-on sex scene every few minutes and endless foul language, even between barristers in court. One juror shows up for duty in a T-shirt with a four-letter slogan, which the judge deems acceptable providing it’s worn inside-out.

Neill is at his hypnotic best, coaching his client to win the jury’s sympathy in a purring growl like a tiger preparing to pounce. Mulvany is strong, too, projecting an arrogance that is instantly dislikeable, and almost willing the jury to find her guilty despite the absence of evidence.

Behind the doors of the jury room, more dramas are brewing. One man refuses to give his name. Another recognises Corrie as the orphaned daughter of a millionaire business couple. There’s already a whiff of blackmail in the air.

Most vulnerable of all is young mother Georgina (Brooke Satchwell), whose controlling husband flies into a cold, jealous rage when he goes through her handbag and discovers she’s been picked for jury service. Spitting with anger, he locks her in the bathroom.

The real criminals might not be in the dock but outside the courtroom.