No More Questions – As this episode begins, Felix Owusu (Fisayo Akinade) is interviewed outside the courtroom. He calls the killing of Marcus Calderwood a political execution. Justin Mitchell (Michael Socha) is in the courtroom when the jury members are brought in. The jury will hear from Philip Holmes KC (Pearce Quigley) for the prosecution and Grainne Westwood KC (Flora Montgomery) for the defense. As they go through their statements, Westwood says Sandra has every reason to give a statement that helps the prosecution. In private, Justin complains to Westwood and Sam Malik (Adeel Akhtar) about the purple-haired woman on the jury. Grace Eze (Ayesha Griffiths) and Nick Taylor (Frankie Wilson) should be questioned first. Grace takes the stand and says Marcus told her the driver was a policeman named Justin Mitchell.

Westwood points out that Marcus was in pain and received morphine. She also discusses the chaos of the scene. When Nick Taylor is questioned, he claims he panicked. He phoned PC Kyle Jones to ask what they should do. Jones said he’d deal with it. Grainne Westwood suggests he threw Jones under the bus to protect himself. After all, he left Jones to deal with it for over 24 hours. Sam and Mani Malik-Cohen (Ali Khan) talk about it later. Mani says an online poll says 82% of people think Justin is guilty. They go on a rant about fascism and zoomers. Mani insists Justin is going down. Helen McGuire (Zoe Telford) meets Felix in the middle of the night. She says senior management is denying that Patrick Norris was an informant. Felix wants her to find out more about the Crawley drug trial and why he escaped prosecution there as well. Helen warns him his piece about Justin being Norris’s useful idiot is clear contempt of court.

She knows Whitley knew Justin had issues. He’d been reported by colleagues and Whitley did nothing. Helen is interested in the culture Whitley is overseeing. Felix offers to do a job on Whitley if she gets more about Norris’s involvement with the police. In court, the jury watches the video of Justin and Marcus. Miles Southgate (Joe Dempsie) says it ended with Marcus’s death. He also mentions Sandra taking the car overseas and getting the car repaired. Justin usually tracked his exercise on a mobile app, but he didn’t have it on that day. Sam questions Miles about the lack of forensics evidence in the case. Miles has to tell the jury about the bike being found on the grounds of the shooting club. Miles didn’t consider it relevant that Justin was having sex with one member’s wife. Sam asks how many pedals are on an ordinary bicycle. Leila Hassoun-Kenny (Nathalie Armin) visits Becky Hollis (Kerrie Hayes) to speak to her.

Leila urges her to come through for the prosecution. Sam continues hammering Miles over the pedal. He points out that they lost the pedal. The media points that out later. At home, Alex (John Marquez) and Leila discuss the fact that Tamara (Anna Wilson-Jones) has been quiet lately. Leila gets a call from her mom and rushes out. She tells Alex that she’s sick. Mani tells Sam that Indifference Kills has done a hatchet job on Whitley. He’s asking why the Feds ignored concerns about serving officers. Patrick Norris was closely linked to businessmen from Crawley. Four were prosecuted for importing drugs from Latin America. Norris avoided prosecution again. Claudia Wood (Nina Toussaint-White) visits out of the blue. She gives Sam his new card and says she won’t be driven out by those little fascists. They talk about the possibility that Justin suffered from PTSD. Sam thinks Justin is brilliant at masking it.

Sam doesn’t know what to do if the pills don’t work. Claudia thinks he should go back to his therapist. Mani leaves after saying he’s going out. From the hospital, Leila calls Alex to say it might be a pulmonary embolism. Tamara arrives and refuses to speak to Leila. Sam struggles to sleep again. On the way in, Sam finds Leila sitting around. He learns about her mom being sick. Sam tells her to pull herself together. He explains he used to be a big lefty back in the day until he grew up. However, that’s why Westwood decided to take the case. Philip speaks to Miles about the case so far. Becky joins them. Philip explains they want to use her to show Justin’s attitude toward Marcus and the giraffe nickname. Becky doesn’t want to dish dirt on the police. Leila enters and says she’s fine. In court, Becky is asked about the group chat called D4.

She points out that Justin used the name Kenny. Becky admits she was surprised that Justin didn’t come to the races. The giraffe was the nickname Justin used for Marcus. Becky raised concerns about Justin for dangerous driving and some of the things he said. He allegedly said he’d choose hit-and-run if he was ever going to murder someone. Westwood gets Becky to admit that Justin never expressed any desire to kill Marcus Calderwood. Becky is asked about “Sniffer”. She says that’s Kyle Jones who Taylor called from the scene. He was always first to the panties drawer during a property search. He was also known for sniffing around a certain part of management anatomy. Justin comments on that on several occasions and jokes about his long, dark tongue. Westwood says giraffes have long, dark tongues. She also says Becky was a member of D4 but never raised concerns about it.

Becky says she took the hit-and-run comment to a senior officer but nothing came from it. Justin says someone squealed on him, but he didn’t think it was Becky. He said it’d be okay because Chief Superintendent Whitley was a fan of his. In private, Sam and Justin talk about that evidence and Indifference Kills committing contempt of court. Justin says they tried to make him go and speak to someone. He didn’t go because he didn’t need it. Justin suspects the Daniella Fielding situation made them think he needed it. Sam learns he didn’t go to two or three psychiatric appointments. Justin reminds him he doesn’t want to play the mental health card as his defense. He tells him not to protect Sam’s weakness onto him. They argue about whether it’s a weakness. Justin suggests Sam can’t sleep because he’s weak. Sam says he keeps imagining his wife being sliced in half after bumping into a train.

Justin tells him to stop imagining it. Sam asks what a good distraction would be and whether that includes fantasizing about beating people. He ends up getting upset and cursing Justin until Westwood enters. Sam suggests most people feel regret when they hurt the ones they love. Chief Superintendent Whitley (Jamie Ballard) enters Miles’s office. Miles tells him he thinks he should resign because he did nothing. He suspects Whitley had an inappropriate relationship with Patrick Norris. Whitley warns him there are some toes he shouldn’t tread on. Miles tells him to resign or he’ll take him out. Sandra (Anna Prochniak) finds Sam and gives him a letter to read. She says she has to tell the truth, but the truth is hard and complicated. She wants him to know what it was like living with Justin after the thing with the pregnant lady.

Sandra knows Justin has a lot of pain and he gave her some. She believes this is about the truth. Sam takes the envelope and leaves. Mani finds him reading it at home. Whitley is harassed and asked if he was fired when he leaves. Sam tells Justin about the letter and things Sandra told him. Sam says it’ll come out in cross-examination. In trying to help Justin, Sandra has handed them a gun to shoot her. They’re going to all the things Justin did to her and use them to kill her in court. Sam says it’s their only hope. Sandra is questioned by Philip about going to Serbia. She admits to lying about the damage to the car. Sandra says PC Jones visited her house and he’s not a good person. Jones got drunk and said he wanted to sleep with her. Justin just laughed about it. Sandra doesn’t know what Jones said to Justin, but Justin changed after the visit and urged her to go.

Westwood gets Sandra to admit that Justin never said anything killing Marcus. Sandra knows Patrick Norris. Westwood asks her about the videos Justin and Elena Norris were making. She mentions Sandra performing cleaning duties for wealthy men without her clothing. Westwood suggests she was angry when she found out and wanted to get even. Sandra says the traffic accident changed Justin who stopped being sweet and gentle. He was always gambling. Sandra tried to make them a nice home. She wanted them to have a family together. Justin squirms in his seat. Sandra reveals she got pregnant and Justin didn’t respond to the news very well. She says she lost the baby. Sandra says Justin was cruel and said it was better this way. Sandra admits this isn’t the first time Justin has been cruel to her. Westwood suggests this was enough to make her want to punish him.

Justin gets upset and yells at them to leave Sandra alone. He admits Sandra deserves better than him. In private, Justin tells Sam and Westwood that she was telling the truth about everything. Justin asks to speak to Sam alone. Sam asks when she lost the baby. Justin gets upset and yells at him not to go there. He didn’t need reminding because he couldn’t get Daniella out of his head. Justin admits to running Marcus off the road, but Sam doesn’t know the whole story. Sam suggests pleading guilty to a charge of manslaughter. Justin refuses to do that. He tells Sam he’s just as bad as the rest of them. If everyone is nuts, then no one is guilty. Justin says he hated him so much because he killed a woman and her unborn baby. He has to take whatever is coming. Sam gives him the letter. He thinks it might help him understand how other people see him.

Justin is left alone to read the letter. Sam returns home to his son who is upset. Mani calls him selfish. He throws the laptop because he knows Sam was considering suicide. Sam tells him he doesn’t understand. Mani leaves him.

 

Showtrial Review

The fourth episode of Showtrial really threw everything out the window and became something entirely different. Unfortunately, it became something even worse considering how farfetched the courtroom scenes were. In reality, there was no evidence against Justin and probably not enough to take it to court. Furthermore, everything with Sandra felt so forced.

It appears the show is going to try to turn into an exploration of mental health now after focusing on so many other topics previously. It is entirely possible that viewers won’t care about the finale or the outcome of the trial at all at this point. At the very least, the first season was still up in the air at this point. We never really found out whether Talitha was guilty.

Here, the evidence was slim to none, yet Justin is still admitting guilt. In reality, Justin is just a small peg in the bigger family drama and all the topics the writers wish to explore. The only thing the show does well is showcase the hypocrisy of everyone involved. We have all these people getting paid well to play games with Justin’s life and Marcus’s murder. These people are likely worse than both.

Eliminating the mystery around Justin’s guilt really destroys any anticipation for the finale. Plus, it just doesn’t work when there was no evidence whatsoever and the truth only slipped out because of some half-backed poorly written courtroom scene. Who knows where this will go? At this point, it looks like it doesn’t matter. As previously pointed out, the ending would be unsatisfactory and that much is clear.

This episode scores a 4 out of 10. Recaps of Showtrial can be found here. Find out how to support our work at this link. Learn more about advertising with us here. See what others are saying here.