World in Action (1963)

"In the Interests of Justice," October 28, 1985 Granada's flagship program took on the case of the Birmingham Six, jailed for the 1974 pub bombings, and went after the science that helped convict them. The episode challenged the Griess test used to suggest two of the men had handled explosives, showing it could react to substances other than nitroglycerine. The government's forensic service began reassessing the test after the broadcast, a slow first crack in a case that ended with the convictions quashed in 1991. It is the clearest example here of television testing evidence on its own terms rather than simply repeating a defense argument. Full copies are hard to come by, so expect archive clips more often than the complete episode.