It s almost 30 years since bon viveur TV barrister Horace Rumpole summed up for the last time at the Old Bailey.
But now there s a new Rumpole on the case – one sure to be very different from the hard-drinking, cigar-chomping lawyer famously played by Leo McKern.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the daughters of Rumpole creator Sir John Mortimer are writing fresh scripts with a woman taking the starring role.
Acclaimed actress Emily Mortimer has spent the past two years working on the project with her journalist sister Rosie, and sources say the drama will reflect the current state of the sexes in the courts, where there are now more female lawyers than male.
Emily Mortimer on her father’s advice: You can be anything as long as you are not boring
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By Ginny Dougary
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Emily Mortimer grew up with the Mitfords, in a manner of speaking. In the white, 1930s house with its pale-green slate roof in Turville Heath on the edge of the Chiltern Hills – which her father, the late QC and
Rumpole of the Bailey writer, John Mortimer, had inherited from his blind barrister father, Clifford – there would be frequent talk about that eccentric family, with its six famous daughters (and one son) of Lord and Lady Redesdale, known as Farve and Muv.
My father s advice: You can be anything as long as you are not boring theage.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theage.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Don’t believe The Pursuit of Love – not all aristocrats are bigots, buffoons and bounders
Are the English upper classes an absurd alien race? The makers of The Pursuit of Love – and many more TV dramas – certainly seem to think so
Lily James as Linda in The Pursuit of Love
Credit: BBC
Emily Mortimer’s production of The Pursuit of Love presented her with an interesting conundrum. She was not just bringing the eccentric aristocracy to the screen, she was adapting them from Nancy Mitford’s adaptation, so she was already two steps away. A series such as The Crown is easier to dissect since it is the fictionalisation of real life people – it makes no attempt at reality at all, but does the unforgivable thing of creating cooked up situations for real people to the point that a large number of viewers – and even documentary makers - believe it to be true.