--- title: "Silk" year: 2011 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/silk" fi1m_id: "silk" imdb_id: "tt1717455" tmdb_id: 37780 wikidata_id: "Q3023625" fi1m_score: 71 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-10-07T16:11:24.747441+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T16:11:32.511882+00:00" region: "PT" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Silk (2011) Created by Peter Moffat · 1h 00m · Drama ## Identity Silk - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/silk - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** silk - **IMDb ID:** tt1717455 - **TMDB ID:** 37780 - **Wikidata ID:** Q3023625 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1717455/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/37780, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3023625 **Fi1m score: 71** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* A legal drama in which the real power is the clerk, and the barristers in their wigs are just the talent > Peter Moffat’s series about a London criminal barrister chasing silk is better than its first reviews allowed. The plots creak and the pupils are a bore, but Maxine Peake is the reason to watch, and she is reason enough. ## Synopsis London, a set of criminal chambers where the barristers argue in court by day and about each other by night. Martha Costello (Maxine Peake), a defence barrister who takes the clients nobody else wants and believes in each of them, has applied for silk, the promotion to Queen’s Counsel. So has Clive Reader (Rupert Penry-Jones), who shares her corridor and her cases and prosecutes as readily as he defends. Between them stands Billy Lamb (Neil Stuke), the senior clerk, who decides who gets which brief. Two pupils, Nick Slade (Tom Hughes) and Niamh Cranitch (Natalie Dormer), compete for a single place in chambers. Each hour brings a trial, a client who may be lying, and a silk application that one bad verdict could sink. ## Review Peter Moffat, who created and wrote *Silk*, wants to show how the English Bar works from the inside: the one case per hour, yes, but also the robing room, the clerks’ room and the long game of getting on. Martha Costello (Maxine Peake) defends people the public would rather see locked up and has applied for silk, the rank of Queen’s Counsel. Clive Reader (Rupert Penry-Jones) has applied too, and is better connected and less scrupulous. The verdict is simple: this is a good legal drama, and if the genre is yours it is worth your evenings. The reviews so far have been harsher, and we will come to that. Peake carries it. She plays Martha as a woman who smokes too much, sleeps too little and talks to juries as if the twelve of them were the only adults in the building. There is a moment in the first series when she realises, mid-trial, that the man she is defending may have done it, and Peake does nothing with her face except let the certainty drain out of it. We were more moved than we expected to be by that, because the series had taught us by then how much her belief in her clients costs her. The script gives her speeches, and she delivers them, but it is the listening that we remember. Around her Moffat has built a proper company. Neil Stuke’s Billy Lamb is the best thing in the series after Peake, a clerk who speaks softly, knows every judge’s weaknesses and treats his barristers as livestock to be fed and sold. Penry-Jones makes Clive charming enough that his betrayals sting. Alex Jennings, as the head of chambers Alan Cowdrey QC, and Frances Barber, as the rival silk Caroline Warwick QC, play the senior Bar as a club that has not yet decided whether to let Martha in. Phil Davis, as the solicitor Micky Joy, brings a kind of damp menace with him, and the series is sharper whenever he appears. Dale Elena McCready shoots the courts in flat daylight through high windows, so the wigs and gowns look like what they are, a uniform, and keeps the camera moving through the corridors so that nobody is ever quite still. Dru Masters’ score is less sure of itself. It swells under closing speeches that did not need help, and once or twice it told us how to feel about a verdict a second before the jury did. The hour-long episodes are cut briskly between trial and chambers, and the pace rarely sags. What does not work is the plotting, and this is where the first reviews had a point. Moffat likes a reversal, and cases turn on a witness who changes their mind or a document that appears at the right time. The opposing counsel are set up as villains a little too neatly. The pupils, Nick Slade (Tom Hughes) and Niamh Cranitch (Natalie Dormer), are given a rivalry that never catches, and we found ourselves waiting through their scenes for the adults to come back. Series 1 in particular has an opening episode that is clunkier than anything after it. The reviews so far judge *Silk* a failure, and one called Peake’s role bloodless. We think they were judging that first hour and not the twelve that followed it, and we think bloodless is the opposite of what Peake does here. Martha bleeds all over the place; the series simply does not stop to mop it up. Over three series of six episodes, first shown from 22 February 2011, the writing settles, the chambers politics deepen, and the cases get harder to call. It is not the equal of Moffat’s best television, but it is a solid, grown-up series that respects its audience and its subject. Watch it for Peake, stay for Stuke, and forgive the pupils. The wigs, at least, are never played for laughs. *Fi1m score 71, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Silk worth watching?** *Silk* is worth watching for anyone who likes a legal drama with the courtroom and the office politics given equal weight, and we scored it 71. The plots creak and the pupils are a bore, but Maxine Peake as a defence barrister chasing Queen's Counsel is the reason to watch, and she is reason enough. **How long is Silk, and what is it rated?** *Silk* has episodes of about 1h 00m. It is a drama series. **Where can I watch Silk in Portugal?** *Silk* is not on any streaming or rental service in Portugal at the moment. It is available in 7 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is Silk, and is it suitable for children?** *Silk* carries a UK 12 certificate and is a talking drama, not a violent one: its tension comes from trials, lying clients and chambers rivalries rather than anything shown on screen. It is suitable for teenagers with an interest in the law, but younger children will find an hour of barristers arguing in wigs slow going. **How does Silk compare to Anatomy of a Murder?** *Silk* and [*Anatomy of a Murder*](https://film.one/film/anatomy-of-a-murder) are both legal dramas that trust the audience to follow the law and the lying, but Preminger's film is the better made of the two, a single trial built in the open over a long running time. *Silk* is looser and its cases turn on convenient reversals, though it gives its woman barrister the centre that the older film denies its one woman. **What should I watch after Silk?** After *Silk*, try [*Anatomy of a Murder*](https://film.one/film/anatomy-of-a-murder) (1959, Fi1m 87): An American trial film that trusts its audience to follow the law and the lying. Then [*The Good Wife*](https://film.one/tv/the-good-wife) (2009, Fi1m 84): A lawyer rebuilding her career one case at a time, with office politics to match. ### Reviews we read (1) - **The Guardian**, Lucy Mangan (20/100, inferred): Mangan judges Silk a rare misfire, with a clunky, predictable plot undermining the drama. She also faults the show for squandering Maxine Peake’s talent in an oddly bloodless role. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2011/feb/23/silk-and-hestons-mission-impossible-review) ## Details - **Created by:** Peter Moffat - **Creator:** Peter Moffat - **Director:** David Evans, Peter Hoar, Marc Jobst, Alice Troughton, Catherine Morshead, Jeremy Webb, Michael Keillor, Michael Offer, Cilla Ware - **Writer:** Peter Moffat, Debbie O'Malley, Stephen Thompson, Mick Collins, Colin Teevan, Christian Spurrier - **Cinematography:** Dale Elena McCready - **Music:** Dru Masters - **Producer:** Peter Moffat, Richard Stokes, Cameron Roach - **Cast:** Phil Davis as Micky Joy; Maxine Peake as Martha Costello QC; Rupert Penry-Jones as Clive Reader QC; Neil Stuke as Billy Lamb; Theo Barklem-Biggs as Jake Milner; John Macmillan as John Bright; Alex Jennings as Alan Cowdrey QC; Frances Barber as Caroline Warwick QC - **Runtime:** 1h 00m - **Release (Portugal):** 22 February 2011 - **Genres:** Drama - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utpyVy6EDEQ ## Where to watch in Portugal Not streaming, renting or buying in Portugal at the last check. Also available in: AT, AU, CA, DE, GB, IE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *North Square* (2000): Peter Moffat’s earlier chambers drama, rougher and funnier, with a clerk you will not forget - *Rumpole of the Bailey* (1978): The Old Bailey as a comedy of manners, with a defence barrister who also never prosecutes - *Anatomy of a Murder* (1959), Fi1m 87: An American trial film that trusts its audience to follow the law and the lying — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/anatomy-of-a-murder.md) - *Spiral* (2005): French police, judges and lawyers at each other’s throats, and nobody clean - *The Good Wife* (2009), Fi1m 84: A lawyer rebuilding her career one case at a time, with office politics to match — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/the-good-wife.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/silk