Private Project

Street Law

Street Law is a fast-paced, multi-ethnic English-language law firm drama, wrapped in a murder mystery.

Set in Singapore, season 1 will run for eight episodes.

A slick, US-style legal drama has never been set in Asia before, so this is truly innovative.

Centred on the Singapore law firm of Street & Street, the series pits recently-bereaved and angry maverick Singaporean lawyer, Ben Street against his nemesis, the sly, urbane American, Scott Greydart, of the more upmarket Greydarts law firm.

Greydart raided Ben’s clients and his most trusted senior lawyer while Ben was recovering from the death of his wife, Tia, in a car accident (which was actually a murder), and he returns to find his firm in serious financial trouble.

Ben refuses bereavement counselling and begins to imagine his wife has returned, but she says she’s simply a manifestation of his confused and emotional state. He uses her regular appearances to progress the mystery of her death, although she firmly and repeatedly reminds him she only exists in his grief-stricken mind, and can only tell him what he already knows.

In each episode we follow the flaws and fortunes of Street & Street’s lawyers and their relationships, jealousies and rivalries, as well as pitting them against the lawyers of Greydarts in their professional and private lives.

Each of the eight episodes also uncovers clues linked to the main plot (two murders which connect to a global shipping hijack insurance scam run out of Singapore) while featuring dramatic day-to-day legal cases and interactions with law firm staff and their clients.

I have attached a document (for indication only) showing previous suggestions for the main cast, as well as some production notes, edited from our previous HOOQ Filmmakers Guild submission (it reached the finals in that Pan-Asian screenplay competition, and has subsequently won Best Screenplay Awards at film festivals in the US and elsewhere).

  • Peter Alan Lloyd
    Writer
    Screenplay for short film Clueless? (2013) Screenplay for M.I.A. A Greater Evil (2017, Feature)
  • Peter Alan Lloyd
    Producer
    Short film Clueless? (2013) M.I.A. A Greater Evil (2017, Feature)
  • Byron Bishop
    Producer
    Short film Clueless? (2013) M.I.A. A Greater Evil (2017, Feature)
  • Project Type:
    Television Script
  • Number of Pages:
    58
  • Country of Origin:
    Thailand
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Golden Gate International Film festival
    San Jose
    October 2017
    Best Screenplay (for Bombed Out)
Writer Biography - Peter Alan Lloyd

Born in Liverpool, Peter studied Law at Oxford University before working as both a trainee and a busy commercial solicitor in the London offices of two of the world’s biggest International law firms (Freshfields, Brukhaus Deringer and US firm Squire Patton Boggs). He knows from experience the legal culture, personalities and character flaws necessary to create great legal drama.

Based in Thailand, Peter is now a screenwriter and author specializing in Punk and New Wave music and the Vietnam War.

Peter's Punk & New Wave feature film screenplay, Bombed Out, has won many awards in the past year (5 Best Screenplay awards), and his screenplay for the multi-award-wining Independent film, M.I.A. A Greater Evil has won a Best Screenplay award in a US screening film festival in recent months.

Street Law's Pilot screenplay was a finalist in a recent HOOQ Pan-Asian streaming content competition and has won awards and been a finalist in numerous film festivals in 2018.

Peter is the Screenwriter and Producer of the feature film, M.I.A. A Greater Evil.

He also wrote the screenplay for the award-winning short film Clueless? in 2013. Shot in Thailand, it won awards at the 9Filmfest in Bangkok and was also screened at the SOHO Film Festival in New York.

Peter is the author of Bombed Out! an account of his time in Liverpool Punk and New Wave bands and the 1980s music business, as well as BACK, a backpacker/Vietnam War crossover novel.

He travels widely in Asia.

Add Writer Biography
Writer Statement

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)