TV Pick of the Week: The Twelve - Review by Yvette Huddleston

In the dock is visual artist Kate Lawson (Kate Mulvany) who is accused of having murdered her teenage niece Claire Spears, even though there is no body. Claire was in the care of her aunt after her parents’ acrimonious divorce. She was also a model for Kate’s edgy artwork – and the media have pounced on that, hinting that the teenager was possibly being groomed by her own aunt. The case is being picked apart in the press, by TV news crews and online, so the jurors are all aware of it before they even enter the courtroom. Kate’s sister Diane (Jenni Baird) and her ex-husband Nathan (Matt Nable) disagree on whether the case should have come to trial – Diane believes that her daughter has simply run away from home (which she has done before), while Nathan appears to believe that his sister-in-law has something to do with Claire’s disappearance.

Against this backdrop of intense media interest and speculation, Kate is to be judged – and the person tasked with presenting her defence and proving her innocence is steely senior counsel Brett Colby (Sam Neill). In the opening episode he tells her “the jury is everything”, emphasising that she must make herself likeable to them and “avoid histrionics”; he also suggests that she should not wear her signature bright red lipstick, advice she ignores.

We then meet the jury and bit by bit their own personal stories are revealed. Among them is a harassed young wife and mother who is trying to navigate living with a coercive controlling husband; a student who is dealing with racism at his university and from the local police; a homesick immigrant who is in the process of trying to ensure his wife and son can join him in Australia; a newly divorced father of two whose construction business is under threat and a wealthy young heiress to a haulage company whose parents were murdered during a robbery at their home.

How their personal experiences and challenges influence or prejudice the jurors’ thinking is explored by the neatly interwoven narratives. And as the evidence is gradually revealed in the courtroom, the question of Kate’s guilt or innocence is left tantalisingly open to interpretation.