The Bench (TV series)

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. 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. A late night repeat on BBC Two followed in June 2008. The series won three BAFTA Cymru awards in 2003, with Eiry Thomas winning Best Actress, Bill Broomfield winning Best Director of Photography for a drama series and Will Oswald winning Best Editor.

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.

Cast

 * Mark Lewis Jones as Des Davies
 * Phaldut Sharma as Ranjit Singh
 * Eiry Thomas as Cheryl Cates
 * Eluned Jones as Val Sullivan
 * Philip McGough as Peter Mansell
 * Clive Willbond-Hill as Colin Francis
 * Roger Evans as Hugh Evans
 * Brian Hibbard as Ralph Jenkins
 * Lesley Vickerage as Katharine Tyrell
 * Anita Reynolds as Nita Jones
 * Martin Cole as Wayne Hayward
 * Rachel Isaac as Ange Collins
 * Siwan Morris as Leanne Phillips