Rumpole of the Bailey

Trained and critically acclaimed in theatre, a successful character actor in movies, Australian performer Leo McKern made his most indelible mark in television. In the mind of many audiences, he became irrevocably intertwined with the title character of Rumpole of the Bailey. the irascible British Barrister created by author John Mortimer. Starring as the wily, overweight, jaded-but-dedicated defense attorney for seven seasons, McKern brought an intelligent, acerbic style to the character which was applauded by critics, audiences and creator Mortimer and ascribed to the character just as the character was inscribed on McKern's acting persona. More than once McKern vowed he would not return to the series because of the inevitable typecasting. Yet, he was always persuaded otherwise by Mortimer who himself vowed that no one but McKern would play the role of Horace Rumpole.

The program, which began in 1978 in the U.K. and was soon exported to the United States via PBS's Mystery! series featured McKern as an attorney who profoundly believed in a presumption of innocence, the validity of the jury system and the importance of a thorough defense. It was an unabashedly civil liberties position. In the course of each show the character typically dissected the stodgy and inefficient machinations of fellow barristers, judges and the legal system in Britain. His resourcefulness and unorthodoxy matched U.S. television's Perry Mason, but with his askew bow tie and white wig, his sidelong looks and interior monologues, Rumpole was more colorful and complicated.

As the program was shown around the world through 1996 McKern could not escape what he called the "insatiable monster" of television which blotted out memories of earlier performances. But that did not stop the Australian periodical The Bulletin from naming McKern one of Australia's top 55 "human assets in" 1990. And in fact television did offer McKern another distinctive, if more transitory, role much earlier than Rumpole. In The Prisoner, a British drama aired in the United Kingdom and the United States in the late 1960s, McKern was one of the first authority figures to repress the hero.

The Prisoner, still a cult classic dissected on many web sites and Internet chat groups, was created by the then enormously popular actor Patrick McGoohan and was intended as an indictment of authoritarian subjugation of the individual. McGoohan in the title role was kept prisoner in a mysterious village by the State, represented most forcefully by the person in charge of the village called "number 2". Engaging in a battle of wills and wits with Number 6 (McGoohan), Number 2 typically died at episode's end to be replaced by a new 2 the next week. McKern played Number 2 in the series' second program, "The Chimes of Big Ben," and helped set the tone of serious banter and political conflict. Killed at the end of the episode, his character was resurrected at the end of the series the next season in "Once upon a Time and Fallout" to demonstrate a change of position in favor of the hero and opposed to the State. Not completely unlike Rumpole, McKern's Number 2 was a system insider who understood principles better than the rest of the establishment (if only belatedly).