CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Pierre: A divinely inspired thief? That's the least of this loser lawyer's worries

Published: 18:20 EDT, 5 October 2026 | Updated: 18:50 EDT, 5 October 2026 Pierre (Ch4) Rating: Three starsRating:You'll no doubt be familiar with the maverick detective who has troubles at home. In this new drama, Pierre Jeffreys is not a detective but a duty solicitor — and he has troubles pretty much everywhere he turns.It took most of the first episode of Pierre to establish this, and I wondered where it was all going to lead.With no big surprises until right at the end, it was left to David Harewood as the criminal solicitor to carry the show, putting on a brave face as everything goes wrong around him.At home, his son has given up university in favour of playing computer games. His office is infested with rats, and the wiring needs work. The practice is also losing money, and he's using his roulette winnings to pay the wages. Pierre (David Harewood) pictured in the new Channel 4 dramaHe has a makeshift consultation with his doctor in a seedy back-alley gambling den (where it seems quite easy to get an appointment) and discovers he might have diabetes. He's feeling his age, and even his football team, Queens Park Rangers, is letting him down.One of his regular clients is Mad Miriam, a shoplifter who claims she is being sexually harassed by a supermarket security guard.It's true that he demanded to inspect her knickers, but only because this is where she was hiding a pair of stockings, an electric toothbrush, a bag of sweets and a spatula. Which soundslike a very cheap version of The Generation Game conveyer belt.'The Lord told me to take them,' she said.His second difficult client is Michael, a young black man who 'borrowed' his aunt's car. She reported it missing, and he was arrested by a police officer who could not have been a more obvious villain if he'd been unveiled at the end of the show by Scooby Doo and the gang.He chewed gum, looked surly, and his blond hair was surely longer than permitted by the Metropolitan Police regulations. You'll no doubt be familiar with the maverick detective who has troubles at home. In this new drama, Pierre Jeffreys is not a detective but a duty solicitorPierre persuades the aunt to drop charges against Michael. 'What favours are we doing to young black men by continually making excuses for them?' she rages, but agrees to give him a second chance. And does Michael go straight and begin a successful career in accountancy? Of course he doesn't. He goes back to his estate, sprays 'PC Tanner is a Racist' on the wall of the basketball court and summons Pierre to admire his work.Pierre is not impressed. 'I was fighting skinheads when you were just a glint in the milkman's eye,' he tells Michael. 'What's a milkman?' the young man replies.By the end of the programme, Michael has been stabbed to death, PC Tanner is smirking on the sidelines, and Pierre vows to catch the killer.Where he's going to spare the time from sorting out his family, trying to make his practice pay, and all those hospital appointments is anybody's guess.