The Bench is a Welsh television legal drama series, co-created by Matthew Robinson and lead writer Catherine Treganna, that first broadcast on BBC One Wales from 17 October 2001.[1] The English-language series follows the daily lives of a group of the prosecutors and defenders of a busy magistrates court, including long suffering Des Davies (Mark Lewis Jones) and young whippersnapper Ranjit Singh (Phaldut Sharma).
Two series of the programme were broadcast, having been filmed back-to-back during the summer of 2001. The series was initially broadcast at 8:30pm on Fridays on BBC One Wales, before being repeated in their entirety an afternoon slot nationwide on BBC One from 27 May 2002.[2] A late night repeat on BBC Two followed in June 2008.[3] The series won three BAFTA Cymru awards in 2003,[4] with Eiry Thomas winning Best Actress, Bill Broomfield winning Best Director of Photography for a drama series and Will Oswald winning Best Editor.[5]
Neither series has been released on DVD, but in 2020, both were released in their entirety on Amazon Prime Video under a deal with Acorn TV, making them available in the United States for the first time.[6]