'Showtrial' Season 2 Releases First Images of New Case

Showtrial made a huge splash when it debuted in the fall of 2021 on the BBC. The five-part series had a relatively simple premise: every few years, a new "Crime of the Century" grips the nation, so instead of waiting for the next major trial to hit the press, World Productions invented one, complete with a courtroom case. It's not quite Law & Order U.K., but it wasn't all that far from it. You have an incident that plays in the press, followed by the arrest, and then the defendant and their solicitor vs the crown prosecutor. By the final episode, you're left wondering who is telling the truth about what happened, and if justice can really be served in the modern era.

Season 1 was a fictionalized version of one of the sorts of cases favored by rolling news networks. Pretty female college student goes missing; however, instead of it being some sort of domestic situation with an evil man who murdered her, the evidence pointed to a fellow female student, Talitha Campbell, the estranged daughter of a wealthy property developer. Rather than fight the case on merits, Campbell hires a solicitor to fight the case on gender and social privilege grounds, saying she's only being accused because of her status.

Season 1 starred Sinead Keenan as the lead DI on the case, who soon after was cast to replace Nicola Walker in Unforgotten, making her return an impossibility. However, with the show a hit and a renewal inevitable, creator Ben Richards decided he didn't need to bring back anyone from Season 1 anyway since that case was over, and it's rare for there to be two Cases of the Centuries originating from the same jurisdiction. Season 2 was announced as the beginning of making Showtrial into an anthology series, with a whole new cast and story.