Paradise Postponed Paradise Postponed Paradise Postponed (1986) is a British 11-episode TV serial based on a novel by writer John Mortimer. He had adapted "Brideshead Revisited" as a film and wrote "Rumpole of the Bailey." The series covered a span of 30 years of postwar British history, set in a small village. The series explores the mystery of why Reverend Simeon Simcox, a "wealthy Socialist rector", bequeathed the millions of the Simcox brewery estate to Leslie Titmuss, a city developer and Conservative cabinet minister. Simeon's sons Fred, a jazz-drumming country doctor and Henry, once Britain's brightest and angriest writer who now works
Rumpole of the Bailey trailing down his waistcoat and faded barrister's wig, "bought second hand from a former Chief Justice of Tonga" (or the Windward Islands: Rumpole is occasionally an unreliable narrator). Despite his affection for the criminal classes, Rumpole's character is marked by a firm set of ethics. He is a staunch believer in the presumption of innocence, the "Golden Thread of British Justice". He often reinforces this by proclaiming that it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent to be convicted (basically Blackstone's formulation). Accordingly, Rumpole's credo is "I never plead guilty", although he has qualified