National Treasure

Operation Yewtree comes to iView ... How the criminal law does a job on the survivors ... The family "choose" to believe him, until they don't ... Multiple women and their complaints come forward ... Shades of Bill, Rolf and Craig ... Miss Lumière gives her view

The Finchleys

Robbie Coltrane gives a cracker (pun intended) of a performance in the British TV series National Treasure, now streaming on ABC iView.

But that's only one reason to tune into this darkly scintillating four- part drama from the pen of prolific playwright and screenwriter Jack Thorne.

Produced in 2016 (after the Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile scandals) National Treasure is based on Operation Yewtree, the British police investigation that uncovered many more instances of sex crimes by powerful men.

Elsewhere, it presages some more recent cases, notably against Bill Cosby in America and in Australia against Craig McLachlan - the former Central Coast tradie, tousle-haired soapie heartthrob, infamous Frank-N-Furter and genial country doctor, Lucien Blake. 

The plot is disturbingly similar, male aesthetics aside.

Coltrane, a gargantuan talent who uses his equally gargantuan girth to dramatic effect, plays Paul Finchley, a beloved if faded funny man and quiz show host, now semi-retired in London suburbia with his wife of 50 years Marie - Julie Walters channelling every tight-faced, long-suffering Catholic woman of indeterminate age since World War 11.

Finchley's comfortable existence starts to unravel when a former babysitter alleges he sexually abused her over three nights when she was 15.

Like the Cosby and McLachlan cases, other women come forward in quick succession, one with a rape allegation dating from the early nineties.

"They think I'm Jimmy fucking Savile," Finchley complains.

Finchley's legal investigator Gerry (a sleazy, compelling Mark Lewis Jones) puts it thus:

"Seven (complainants) is about what you'd expect in cases like these ..."

Finchley is unfazed. He hires the best legal advice (read ruthless, media-savvy and cynical) in solicitor Jerome Sharp (Babou Ceesay) and female silk Zoe Darwin (Kerry Fox).

Underneath however, things are unravelling. His drug-addled daughter Dee, played with brittle brilliance by Andrea Riseborough, has been alienated from both her parents for some time and the reason why forms part of the doubt that propels both the action and the interaction.

Thorne's grasp of dysfunctional family dynamics is so sharp that the exchanges between Finchley, Marie and Dee become more terrifying with each episode.

Thorne's dialogue bites, chews and spits out accusations and recriminations. Are they truths? Who knows? Who decides? 

These questions remain suspended in the increasingly fetid air right up until the final episode, which sees Finchley face two of his accusers in The Old Bailey.

By this time, and after the usual tabloid media hatchet work, Finchley's bonhomie has been reduced to pure arrogance driven by the unvarnished will to survive. 

These scenes, mainly of cross examination, are brutal in their detail, with Finchley and his accusers framed in unflinching close-up. 

Thorne and his director Marc Munden make a devastating meal of the women's evidence. 

As Marie, who is beginning to see the ugliness beneath her marriage, says to her husband, "They were destroyed up there".

So in some part, is Paul Finchley, and everything he holds dear, including his idea of himself.

It's not a pretty picture of how the criminal law works in such cases, but an accurate one. 

Coltrane's performance is so nuanced, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment at which his true persona is laid bare, but once illuminated it cannot be unseen. 

Bill Cosby and Craig McLachlan must be hoping they remain safely beyond the footlights (their recent acquittals notwithstanding). 

*National Treasure is streaming now on ABC iView.