History Series / RumpoleofTheBailey

* RealityEnsues:
** Rumpole's habit of turning down more lucrative law practices, and promotions seems all find and admirable until you remember he how often his bank account get overdrawn. In ''Rumpole and the Last Resort'' he has no money to pay utilities because a particular seedy solicitor is refusing to pay him his due from a back case.
** It also means he really doesn't have much money for a pension so he can't retire from the Bar, even if he wanted to.
** Since Rumpole refuses to take QC, he's therefore a "junior" barrister and often finds himself sitting second chair on cases to QC's and he often works to have them removed from the case (usually by impressing the client well enough that they just want Rumpole as their brief) so he can defend them properly.
** His habit of insinuating respectable people are guilty of crimes in his cross examinations upset many judges and they are openly hostile to him and vice versa. It also means he gets threatned with disbarment on occasion when he really can't back up his claims like in ''Rumpole and the Learned Friends"

* [[Asexuality]]: Rumpole, while occasionally indulging in romantic speculation, never shows any sexual interest in either his wife or anyone else, somewhat to Hilda's frustration at times.

* DrivenToSuicide: One of the characters in "Rumpole and the Official Secret" winds up [[spoiler:throwing himself under a train.]]

A Creator/ThamesTelevision production for Creator/{{ITV}} series, intermittently from 1978 to 1992, following an episode of Creator/TheBBC's ''Series/PlayForToday'', focused on the professional and personal life of one Horace Rumpole, barrister at law (played by Leo [=McKern=]).

* YourCheatingHeart:
** Featherstone, in "Rumpole and the Case of Identity", with the secretary Angela. Rumpole talks him out of it.
** Phyllida Erskine-Brown in the [[ChristmasEpisode Christmas special]] "Rumpole's Return". She gets disgusted after her paramour, a young radical lawyer, tries to set up Rumpole to lose so he'll get Rumpole's room in chambers. Amusingly, she calls him "a nice bit of crumpet" -- words usually reserved for men speaking of their mistresses.

* EmbarrassingMiddleName: Claude ''Leondard'' Erskine-Brown. Rumpole exhibits unbridled joy reciting it when [[spoiler:he learns it just before his cross-examination of Erskine-Brown in "Rumpole a la Carte"]].

** He gives Samuel Ballard the honor of not one but two nicknames: "Soapy Sam" (referring to Samuel Wilberforce, a famous public speaker and defender of Christianity in the late 19th century) and the rather less complimentary "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollard Bollard]]." In the stories, "the Savanarola of our chambers."

* HuntingAccident: "Rumpole and the Sporting Life" revolves around a death that may have been murder or a genuine hunting accident. [[spoiler:It was a genuine accident--though not by the victim's wife (who intentionally shot her husband's dead body to protect her lover whom she mistakenly thought had killed him) but by his neighbor (who had actually killed the victim while illegally shooting pheasants from his window).]]

* HuntingAccident: "Rumpole and the Sporting Life" revolves around a death that may have been murder or a genuine hunting accident.

** Charles Hearthstoke self-identifies as a Tory when discussing radical change at chambers with...

* NotSoInnocentWhistle: Rumpole puts on one of these in "Rumpole and the Last Resort" when he tries to nonchalantly walk out of his bank after bouncing a cheque. It fools nobody, and his InnerMonologue he ought to have just made a dash for it instead.

* ComicBookTime: Rumpole is somewhere in his mid-sixties when first introduced, and never really gets any older. (See the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey#Biographical_information Other Wiki]] for a detailed rundown of the series' flexible chronology.) Strangely, this only applies to Rumpole and his wife. The young female lawyer introduced just passing the bar in the first stories is an experienced judge in late middle age by the end, and many other characters also age, retire, and so forth. Even stranger, the timeline of the series works just fine if you assume Rumpole was born in the 1910s (putting him in his 20s at the beginning of World War II,[[note]]Just old enough to have just started a legal career, or about to[[note]] in his 50s at the beginning of the series[[note]]Just old enough to have a son about to leave school and to think about becoming head of chambers or taking silk[[/note]] and his 70s around the end[[note]]A late retirement, but it's hardly unusual for lawyers who really love the job to remain in harness well into their 70s[[/note]]). Incidentally, Leo [=McKern=] was born in 1920.

* ComicBookTime: Rumpole is somewhere in his mid-sixties when first introduced, and never really gets any older. (See the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey#Biographical_information Other Wiki]] for a detailed rundown of the series' flexible chronology.) Strangely, this only applies to Rumpole and his wife. The young female lawyer introduced just passing the bar in the first stories is an experienced judge in late middle age by the end, and many other characters also age, retire, and so forth. Even stranger, the timeline of the series works just fine if you assume Rumpole was born sometime around 1915, give or take two years (making him about 25 at the beginning of World War II,[[note]]Just old enough to have just started a legal career, or about to[[note]] 50 at the beginning of the series[[note]]Just old enough to have a son about to leave school and to think about becoming head of chambers or taking silk[[/note]] and about 75 at the end[[note]]A late retirement, but it's hardly unusual for lawyers who really love the job to remain in harness well into their 70s[[/note]]). Incidentally, Leo [=McKern=] was born in 1920.

* ComicBookTime: Rumpole is somewhere in his mid-sixties when first introduced, and never really gets any older. (See the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey#Biographical_information Other Wiki]] for a detailed rundown of the series' flexible chronology.) Strangely, this only applies to Rumpole and his wife. The young female lawyer introduced just passing the bar in the first stories is an experienced judge in late middle age by the end, and many other characters also age, retire, and so forth. Even stranger, the timeline of the series works just fine if you assume Rumpole was born sometime around 1915, give or take two years (making him about 50 at the beginning of the series and about 75 at the end--a late retirement, but it's hardly unusual for lawyers who really love the job to remain in harness well into their 70s). Incidentally, Leo [=McKern=] was born in 1920.

* ComicBookTime: Rumpole is somewhere in his mid-sixties when first introduced, and never really gets any older. (See the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey#Biographical_information Other Wiki]] for a detailed rundown of the series' flexible chronology.) Strangely, this only applies to Rumpole and his wife. The young female lawyer introduced just passing the bar in the first stories is an experienced judge in late middle age by the end, and many other characters also age, retire, and so forth. Even stranger, the timeline of the series works just fine if you assume Rumpole was born sometime around 1915, give or take two years (making him about 50 at the beginning of the series and about 75 at the end--a late retirement, but it's hardly unusual for lawyers who really love the job to remain in harness well into their 70s).

* ComicBookTime: Rumpole is somewhere in his mid-sixties when first introduced, and never really gets any older. (See the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpole_of_the_Bailey#Biographical_information Other Wiki]] for a detailed rundown of the series' flexible chronology.) Strangely, this only applies to Rumpole and his wife. The young female lawyer introduced just passing the bar in the first stories is an experienced judge in late middle age by the end, and many other characters also age, retire, and so forth.

A Creator/ThamesTelevision production for Creator/{{ITV}} series, intermittently from 1978 to 1992, following a one-off [[Creator/TheBBC BBC]] drama, focused on the professional and personal life of one Horace Rumpole, barrister at law (played by Leo [=McKern=]).

* JadedWashout: Rumpole. He's still a competent barrister but his most famous days were the Penge Bungalow Murders after WWII. His practice is not as sucessful as it once was, he's considered an embarrassment by his peers, and a disappointment to his wife.

* CantHoldHisLiquor: Samuel "Soapy Sam" Ballard, QC, gets absolutely blotto -- as in fall-on-the-floor, can't-remember-how-many-drinks-he's had, crazy ''drunk'' -- after a mere five small glasses of sherry.

* DrinkOrder:
** "A glass of the old cooking wine": Pommeroy's Plonk, Pommeroy's Very Ordinary, Chateau Thames Embankment, Chateau Fleet Street, all names for Rumpole's trademark £2-a-bottle claret.
** As for Mrs. Rumpole, she'll have a gin and tonic.
** Henry the clerk is portrayed as ordering a pale, peculiar drink with a lemon slice floating in it at Pommeroy's Wine Bar ("Rumpole and the Last Resort"); it's Dubonnet and lemonade.
** Claude Erskine-Brown fancies himself a wine connoisseur ("Rumpole and the Blind Tasting").
** "Soapy Sam" CantHoldHisLiquor, and is thus often found drinking sparkling water.