The series has featured actors and actresses such as Christopher Eccleston, Benjamin Smith, Juliet Stevenson, Andy Serkis, Marc Warren, Naomie Harris, Sean Bean and Anne-Marie Duff as the accused in each episode.

After the cancellation of The Street in 2009 by Granada Television, McGovern formed RSJ Films to produce independent drama programmes and subsequently devised the Accused anthology series.

The new cast members confirmed to appear in these episodes included Anne-Marie Duff, Olivia Colman, Robert Sheehan, Joe Dempsie, Sheridan Smith, Paul Popplewell and comedian John Bishop.

It was also announced that Sean Bean had joined the cast as "an English teacher who has a cross-dressing alter ego", and would star in an episode alongside Stephen Graham, which would be co-written by McGovern and Shaun Duggan and directed by Ashley Pearce.

Reviewing the first episode, Lucy Mangan for The Guardian said, "It was – as ever with the writer of The Street, Cracker and Hillsborough – a compelling dissection of the fragility of ordinary lives, but you did long for just a little light and shade.

"[17] The Independent's Brian Viner praised the actors, including Eccleston, and the story for being about a plumber living "in an ordinary house in an unremarkable Northern town" and not about "a detective, or a doctor, barrister, architect or spy".

[18] In The Herald, Damien Love also praised Eccleston's "brilliant" and "electrifying" performance, and said, "It's a strange, spiky programme, never perfect, but supremely watchable".

[19] The controversial second episode was reviewed by Pete Naughton for The Daily Telegraph, who said, "what McGovern tried and largely succeeded to do was to paint a compelling picture of the brutality that can arise when men under high levels of stress turn on one another" and that "it seemed clear early on that this was a drama about institutionalised bullying whose characters happened to be soldiers, rather than an attempt at a journalistic-style exposé of bullying within the Army".

[20] In The Guardian, John Crace found it "compelling": "McGovern remains one of the best TV writers in the business and if he does tend to get carried away with torturing his own characters, you can forgive him because of the pace and economy with which he delivers the story.

It was co-produced between Sony Pictures Television, All3Media America and Fox Entertainment, with Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa and David Shore as executive producers.