The Scales of Justice

This series of shorts replaced B features on thé Associated British Cinemas circuit.The fact that the last films were made in colour,indicates that they were thinking about their eventual sale to TV.They are competently made with reasonable plots and cast with Well known actors

As with the other Merton Park productions, IMDb has got it wrong in describing these as a "TV series". They were cinema second features produced for Anglo Amalgamated running around 30 minutes and followed the "Scotland Yard" series of shorts also introduced by Edgar Lustgarten. Production was sporadic (presumably filling gaps in the Edgar Wallace schedule), the first three released Nov-Dec 1962, a second batch of three released Sept/Oct 1963, two more in Feb 1965, one in Dec 1965 and a final batch (in colour) Sept 1966 to March 1967. The usual Merton Park recipe of familiar British actors in tightly plotted screenplays (based on real cases) with better than usual B movies production standards. All thirteen have now (Oct 2012) been released on DVD by Network.

There has been much criticism about Merton Park Productions being listed as TV series proper on IMDB, but as they were very popular TV fillers anyway it's frankly the easiest way to view each series as a whole rather than sporadic films on the IMDB lists. Plus of course most of the films are now listed separately anyway in their theatrical versions. The Scales of Justice series was perhaps initially a disappointment to those expecting old Edgar in a creepy room introducing a noir, grim, dirty raincoat murder as it's predecessor 'Scotland Yard' would do. This new series was fresh and modern in it's approach and dealt with the trials and tribulations of the less severe aspects of 'the human condition' and so nothing much has changed and all the cases featured could well happen in the present day. Add into the mix,good production values for the tiny budget, lively location work, great court room scenes and a couple of amusing 'light' episodes and you have a series that could have ran and ran ...on television. It's a shame that an ITV company never adopted Merton Park as a subsidiary.