Is It Legal?

1995
7.7| 0h30m| en
Synopsis

Is It Legal? is a British television sitcom set in a solicitors office in Hounslow, west London, which ran from 1995 to 1998. It was produced by Hartswood Films and was shown on ITV for Series 1-2 and Channel 4 for Series 3. It was written by Simon Nye, who also wrote other ITV sitcoms such as Men Behaving Badly and Hardware.

Director

Producted By

Carlton Television

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Trailers & Clips

Also starring Kate Isitt

Reviews

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped
Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated
ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
johnie dollar Is it legal is an interesting comedy series. The show details out instances of law misbehavior of a local law firm. Funny stuff and a great series. I give this comedy series a 9 out of 10 starts. For all the good a comedy show like this produces it does not equate to the real world. In reality people do not live such a comedy lifestyle. They live in the real world with real consequences. Everyday people wonder about legalities. Is it legal to do this, is it legal to do that. These are all interesting and valid questions in the quest for legal knowledge. Fortunately there is a website that helps address these legal questions. The site on is it legal to can be checked out at isitlegalto.com.cheers!
trimmerb1234 This very English sit com contains a series of under-performing human beings who spend 8 hours a day together in a small law office. We all recognise elements of them either in ourselves or in others yet how to describe them? Why do the English not have the exact words? Because we would consider it unkind to give harsh labels to the harmless. The Dalmation-dotty hopeless young Colin. Bumbling Bob - permanently paralysed by a mixture of passion and embarrassment. Stella: the real engine of the establisment but never getting work and a love-life in sync. Young Darren - his school friends would be out stealing cars but Darren has, relatively, a conscience and some ambition, and has risen to the level of office dogs-body. Alison a bored, beautiful bitch. Dick - posh senior partner, clever, clubbable and terminally lazy. An excellent and often accomplished cast.This is at times hilarious comedy. Its because we don't have the words to precisely categorise every kind of fool that it remains kind and not judgemental. We get to like them all in different ways. There is a self-effacing quality about Simon Nye's writing too - clever but never flashily so.Oddly it reminds me a little of "King of Queens" - entirely different setting but similarly human and not unkind.
VLeung I thought the show would be worse without Dick, the wonderfully smug and posh senior partner, but Is It Legal was great right to the end. I like the way Nye isn't afraid to make class jokes, which are pretty rude, but perfectly charming. Every character was a weird twist on an apparent stereotype, so they were all weird and funny and vulnerable and more complicated than they first appeared. But at the same time, the scripts were excellent, with genuinely great one-liners. This is some of the best comedy ever made.
delahoc English sitcoms always seem so much fresher than American ones, and this is a perfect example of why.There is very little slapstick or visual comedy in the series, but what they do have works. The real strength of 'Is it Legal?' is in the characterisations, and this is typical of English sitcoms.Most American sitcoms that try to create comedic characters tend to go overboard. The word 'subtlety' appears to have gone missing from the US dictionaries. Let's look at some examples here.Bob is such an understated and self-effacing character, but without making it depressing. He is naive, shy and lacks self-confidence - very much the bumbling English nobody that Hugh Grant used to specialise in. Only here, Bob is believable, worthy of our sympathy, and funny.My favourite character though is Alison. The essentially talentless but scheming and bitchy secretary that many of us have probably seen in a thousand workplaces. Yet at the same time we know exactly what her weaknesses and vulnerabilities are, and they are used to perfection in many scripts. By the way, if anyone has any more details on Kate Isitt, the beautiful actress who plays Alison, then I would love to hear from them.This is not English comedy in the style of Monty Python (which I dearly love). It is subtle, quiet, unassuming, but nevertheless extremely amusing. Not belly laughs or gross-outs but a pleasant, undemanding and wholly entertaining comedy.