Pierre; Damilola: The Untold Story

“You’ll no doubt be familiar with the maverick detective who has troubles at home. In this new drama, Pierre Jeffreys is not a detective but a duty solicitor — and he has troubles pretty much everywhere he turns. It took most of the first episode of Pierre to establish this, and I wondered where it was all going to lead. With no big surprises until right at the end, it was left to David Harewood as the criminal solicitor to carry the show, putting on a brave face as everything goes wrong around him.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“David Harewood is a terrific actor who has been in the business for nearly four decades, so it’s odd that it has taken until the age of 60 for him to land the lead role in a TV series, something he has described, perhaps with some understatement, as “a little bit frustrating”. Still, at least Pierre (Channel 4) was a starring role worth waiting for. The series has its flaws but Harewood’s character, Pierre Jeffries, a knackered duty solicitor working in a shabby, rodent-infested office, is, range-wise, the full package for an actor.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Pierre’s world is generously populated with colourful characters besides (bonus casting points for the inclusion of Christopher Fairbank’s delightfully Dickensian visage), which means there’s a lot of ground to cover. Pierre the show – like Pierre the man – sometimes buckles under this burden by, for instance, attempting to condense modern race and policing politics into a few lines of chatty dialogue, which lands with all the subtlety of an anvil on a pavement. But, still, his friends in places high and low agree: nobody does it quite like Pierre. So if he has been overburdened with responsibility, the only agreeable solution is to allow more time for him to work things out for everyone who depends on him. That sounds like a season two commission to me.”
Ellen E Jones, The Guardian

“Scenes end again and again with Pierre getting a text message telling him he needs to be somewhere else now (ie, the next scene). Friends in high places keep appearing, allowing Pierre access to information that a normal unsung duty solicitor surely wouldn’t have. The viewer is continually spoon-fed exposition via sit-downs in cafés and characters explaining what feelings they are feeling (rather than letting the actors express those feelings through the medium of acting). The conclusion has to be that there is a good reason why duty solicitors haven’t made it on to primetime telly before. Or, as Pierre might put it: “This stinks. Something’s off.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“There are stark testimonials not just from the North Peckham kids, but also from the people who would become professionally and personally enmeshed with the case. The caretaker who found Damilola, Bill Casale, says it felt as if the boy “was dying in my arms … I knew he was dying”. Sandra Laville – now a Guardian journalist, then at the Daily Telegraph – speaks to the wider difficulty of getting the media to pay attention: “If it had been a kid in Hampshire, it would have resonated.” That was, until the smiling picture of Damilola in his school uniform, which would become the defining image of him, was released.”
Hannah J Davies, The Guardian