THE JURY PEOPLE

Remember Twelve Angry Men? The dismayingly prolific Mr. Wainwright obviously does, this being a close-up on twelve north-of-England jurors as they consider the evidence for and against Sam Ferishta, a Pakistani youth who knifed a white kid. So, along with the racial prejudice runaround--were the whites baiting the scared Pakistani?--we get twelve recurring strains (strain is definitely the word) of private life: two jurors share some ""Now. . . now. . . now!"" sex, one is a latent homosexual in trauma, one has a sick wife, some have business worries, etc. And two case-related subplots are added to thicken the thinnest of mysteries-the dead kid's violent fellow ""yobs"" are trying to intimidate the jury; one juror is a journalist being pressured by his paper to fix the verdict and write an expose. Typical Wainwright: crudely energetic, but without a jot of originality, charm, or truth.