Last Chance Lawyer, BBC2

Barnaby Peel
Series director

Above a nondescript bank on a scruffy, bustling high street in downtown Brooklyn, New York, there is a large floor-to-ceiling window.

From the street, the Sky’s reflections make it difficult to see inside. But if you could, you’d see the silhouette of a lawyer in a slightly soiled suit with a wispy mane of receding white hair, reclining in a high-backed office chair, clutching a tattered pile of scraps of paper.

And if you could hear him, he’d probably be shouting something obscene.

Howard Greenberg isn’t a patient man. There is always someone ready to ruin his day - “yuppy douchebag cyclists”; “lying” cops and prosecutors; late-paying clients; “whining” employees; even his wife of 17 years, who, he says, is “constantly twisting my balls”.

From February to August this year, he also had to cope with us, “the Brits” (a two-person documentary team).

It’s unprecedented for a criminal defence lawyer to grant such access to their secretive world. Perhaps only a maverick like Howard would be bold enough to be so open.

Howard is not your average criminal defence lawyer and a series set in his New York law office was never going to be your average documentary about criminal justice in America.

Our aim was to make an observational series that borrowed from the style of a US sitcom while revealing the moral complexities and harsh realities of Howard’s line of work. We felt this unique character could give us an engaging view of the system from an unusual perspective on the other side (the ‘dark side’, as Howard styles it).

It’s unprecedented for a criminal defence lawyer to grant such access to their secretive world. The risk of breaching confidentiality and client-attorney privilege are far too off-putting. Perhaps only a maverick like Howard would be bold enough to be so open. When he said that he was in 100%, he meant it.

Howard’s world, we discovered, is one that defies shoot planning. Court dates – especially, it seemed to us, those that were crucial to us finishing off our storylines – were repeatedly adjourned at the last minute because a judge or prosecutor was unavailable. New clients constantly walked into the tiny office unannounced; many was the time they’d sit, bemused, as we filmed the tail-end of a meeting between Howard and one of his existing defendants. It became obvious why Howard lives his life almost entirely in the moment and we had to learn to do the same.

Howard would usually be doing three different things at once; four, if you counted his constantly ringing mobile phone, which never went unanswered. It made shooting sequences that made sense very difficult but from the start, we were clear that we didn’t want him to change.

This chaos was Howard’s natural state and to capture it, we had to learn to work with it. You never knew what the next jaw-dropping phone call or walk-in client meeting would reveal.

“The truth is whatever I say it is”

Within the first hours of filming, Howard had taken a call from a suicidal extortion victim who he talked down with expletive-laden moral reasoning on why suicide was a bad idea, just after a visit from the father of a repeat client facing a gun charge, whom Howard placated by invoking the catchphrase of a deceased evangelist.

Some of our best material came from this spontaneity. It was fascinating but terrifying too, especially as we’d agreed with the BBC that we’d set out to make the series without commentary.

“The truth is whatever I say it is,” Howard told us. He assured us that all his clients were innocent.

The tone of the series was a constant balancing act in the edit. We worked hard to keep the humour and irreverence without it jarring with the legal cases.

From the start we knew that the series would require a healthy dose of scepticism and we found it in Howard’s no-nonsense wife Marie. It was quickly clear that this former court stenographer would become a central character, helping us to hold her complicated husband to account.

Howard’s home life is often as bizarre as his business one and we always intended to ensure this would form a central element of the series.

Another character who we always felt defined what we wanted the series to become was Arlene, a septuagenarian toy store owner (and part-time storm chaser) whose relationship with Howard holds a key to understanding his complicated past.

One minute, we were filming a man change his trousers in the street; the next, we’re shooting him in court defending a man accused of a truly horrifying murder. The tone of the series was a constant balancing act in the edit. We worked hard to keep the humour and irreverence without it jarring with legal cases of people accused of some very unpleasant crimes.

Howard’s larger than life character might seem made for television, but working with a born performer can be a challenge too. There was always a danger of him putting on a show. We worked hard to ensure we were filming his relationship with us, the programme makers, not with the camera.

Viewers might find it hard to believe, but the Howard you see in the series is the same Howard you see when the camera is turned off. One thing is undeniably true: none of us have ever met anyone quite like him.