Street Law

Street Law is a fast-paced, slickly-written Asian version of US shows of the quality of Damages, Suits, The Good Wife and Boston Legal. These shows are well-crafted legal dramas, mostly featuring season-long story arcs and single episode-only plots, for example weekly legal cases, which is the format Street Law will also follow.

A multi-racial, English-language legal drama has never been done before in Singapore or in Asia. Setting it here also allows us to juxtapose Singapore’s sophisticated and ordered (English-language) legal and corporate world with the more chaotic life literally on the streets of a vibrant, cosmopolitan Asian city.

The inclusion of multi-ethnic characters will appeal to domestic Asian markets, but I also believe the series will have a global audience too, being an entertaining and compelling law series set in exotic locations.

“Street Law” is a double pun – being not only the surname of the main characters, but also an indication of how lawyers in this firm practice law. They are very street-smart. The name also nods at a theme running through the episodes: the ‘street’ nature of the series, where the poor and the underclass, trying to make a living, are jammed up against professionals working in gleaming office tower blocks, closing multibillion-dollar international, corporate deals. The “Pro bono” aspect of Street & Street’s practice allows us to effortlessly introduce more disadvantaged people and unusual storylines into weekly cases.

Ben Street’s recent bereavement and grief-stricken state of mind will drive the ‘feel’ of the series, and will certainly drive Ben’s uncompromising character.

The guy has just lost his wife and eventually thinks he’s going mad. The poignancy of his deceased wife’s visits and the love and grief he articulates in their dialogues will provide a powerful emotional undercurrent in the series. It also drives key elements of the plot. (There is a major plot twist at the end of episode 8 when his wife’s visits are revealed to be more than just a figment of his imagination).

The scenes with Ben and his wife will be very poignantly acted and shot, but they will also include upbeat and humorous interplay between the characters as befits their loving, close relationship before she died (this can be more clearly seen in the Episode 1 screenplay).

The backstabbing and double-dealing inside the nastier corridors of Greydarts law firm will act as a foil to the more basically run but innately good Street & Street, and the contrast between these two law firms and their employees will be drawn out in many personality-driven clashes and plot crossovers from start to finish in the series.

Street & Street’s lawyers are hard-working, clever, sassy and good looking. Very positive Asian role models. I want to introduce more humorous and witty dialogue and plot lines into the series through these lawyers and their interactions; even in the way they close cases. It’s not a comedy, but I want there to be a few laugh-out-loud moments in each episode, usually at the expense of naïve junior lawyers.

I’d film the exterior of Singapore’s law courts (forbidden to film inside), Fort Canning Park, Clarke Quay, the Marina Bay area, and other relevant outside locations. Also street life at dawn, sunset, at night, majestic panoramas over the city from places like the Marina Bay Sands, and Singapore’s dock area. The vibrant markets and streets of Chinatown, Little India and inside some of the wonderful, small temples hidden away on Singapore’s streets. All these locations would add an authentically Singaporean and beautiful backdrop to the episodes.
However, all internal scenes, and even some of the street scenes could be considerably more cheaply shot in Bangkok.

Over the whole Street Law series there is considerable misdirection and many plot twists. In particular, Ben’s initial investigations which simply prove to him that Tia’s death was an accident (even though the audience know the opposite to be true). The series also shifts suspicion about who was behind the murder/s, whether Tia was having an affair, are her mysterious spectral appearances just a manifestation of Ben’s grief?

There are also dramatic revelations nobody will see coming. For example that nice, secretive senior lawyer Kim Yu and arch-rat Patrick Feng are living together in a loving relationship and are actually engaged. Surely Patrick can’t be ALL bad, can he? Even the seemingly trivial missing-biscuits-in-the-firm’s-fridge sub-plot in episode one eventually comes to bear directly on events in the main plot, after suspicions are unfairly misdirected at the office staff.

I see Street Law as a global vehicle to showcase not only the cream of Asian English-language actors, but also in creating very positive Asian role models.

In a recent speech at the US Emmys, an Asian writer decried the lack of Asian-American TV and film roles in the US. I’d like Street Law to partly redress that balance, by bringing an Asian-based, fast-moving and entertaining legal drama into homes across the world.

I believe it is a truly unique concept, and I am convinced Street Law will be a major commercial success.

Street Law was created with Byron Bishop, my creative and production partner. Whilst we developed it with Singapore in mind, it would also work in any other port city in Asia.

Street Law's Pilot screenplay was a finalist in a recent HOOQ Pan-Asian streaming content competition (September 2017)