It starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, a middle-aged London barrister who defended a broad variety of clients, often underdogs.

Despite attempts by his friends and family to get him to move on to a more respectable position for his age, such as a Queen's Counsel (QC) or a Circuit Judge (positions Rumpole sarcastically calls "Queer Customers" and "Circus Judges"), he only enjoys defending his clients (who are often legal aid cases) at the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court: "the honour of being an Old Bailey Hack", as he describes his work.

The Timson clan of "minor villains" (primarily thieves) regularly rely on Rumpole to get them out of their latest bit of trouble with the law.

Rumpole is proud of his successful handling of the Penge Bungalow Murders "alone and without a leader" (that is, as a "junior" barrister without a QC) early in his career and of his extensive knowledge of bloodstains and typewriters.

Rumpole's chanciest encounters stem from arguing with judges, particularly those who seem to believe that being on trial implies guilt or that the police are infallible.

Rumpole enjoys smoking inexpensive cigars (cheroots), drinking cheap red wine and a diet of fried breakfasts, overboiled vegetables and steak and kidney pudding.

His peers sometimes criticise his attire, noting his old, battered Homburg hat, imperfectly aligned clothes, cigar ash 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).

[2] Mortimer's 2009 obituary in The Daily Telegraph confirmed that Rumpole was, in part, based on a chance meeting in court with James Burge QC: In the early 1970s Mortimer was appearing for some football hooligans when James Burge, with whom he was sharing the defence, told him: "I'm really an anarchist at heart, but I don't think even my darling old Prince Peter Kropotkin would have approved of this lot."

Cursed be he who steals this book," (Series 4 – 1987); in Rumpole and the Fascist Beast it is mentioned that he studied at Birkenshaw School, which he calls "a wind-blasted penal colony on the Norfolk coast"; he bought his barrister's wig in 1932; first appeared in court in 1937; first met Hilda on 14 August 1938; served in the RAF Ground Staff in World War II; married Hilda in approximately 1944; won the Penge Bungalow Murder case in 1947; and had his son Nick in 1951.

In general, in the book series, it would seem that Rumpole has been frozen at an age of around 70 years, and past events in his life have been retconned to fit each story's time frame.

The son of Reverend Wilfred Rumpole and his wife Alice, and born at Dulwich,[4][5] Rumpole attended "Linklater's" (a fictional minor public school)[6] and studied law at either Keble College[7] or the fictional "St Joseph's College", Oxford,[8] coming away with "a dubious third" (Oxford then awarded fourths, so a third is equivalent to a 2:2).

Rumpole raises tensions with his American daughter-in-law Erica (Deborah Fallender) because of their differing views (such as her disapproval of his cross-examining a rape victim he believed to be lying).

Rumpole retired for a short period of time, moving to Florida to be near his son Nick, a sociology professor and now department head at the University of Miami.

Rumpole often says that Nick is proud of his father's work in criminal law, and enjoyed his accounts of his cases and "harmless legal anecdotes".

[18] Mortimer also drew parallels with his 1957 radio play "The Dock Brief", in which elderly and unsuccessful barrister Morganhall (Michael Hordern) is called upon to defend a man, Fowle (David Kossoff), accused of murder.

Mortimer presented an idea for a new play, titled "My Darling Prince Peter Kropotkin", that centred on a barrister called Horace Rumbold.

These introduced and established the supporting characters including Guthrie Featherstone (Peter Bowles), Claude Erskine-Browne (Julian Curry) and Phyllida Trant (Patricia Hodge).

Rob Page's title sequence, featuring amusing caricatures of Rumpole, was inspired by the nineteenth-century cartoonist George Cruikshank, who had illustrated the works of Charles Dickens.

[24] The music was composed by Joseph Horovitz, whose extensive use of the bassoon for Rumpole's theme complemented Leo McKern's portly stature and sonorous voice.

Leo McKern is superb as the wild and witty barrister Rumpole"[26] – The Times; "I wouldn't say the BBC threw away a pearl richer than all its tribe but it has mislaid a tasty box of kippers"[26] – Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian) and Thames quickly commissioned a second series.

When Rumpole of the Bailey returned for its fourth series in 1987, Marion Mathie took over as Hilda when Peggy Thorpe-Bates retired because of poor health.

Five different actors portrayed Horace Rumpole in these episodes: Leo McKern, Maurice Denham, Timothy West, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Julian Rhind-Tutt.