The Bench is a Welsh television legal drama series, co-created by Matthew Robinson and lead writer Catherine Treganna, that first broadcast on BBC One Wales from 17 October 2001.

[1] The English-language series follows the daily lives of a group of the prosecutors and defenders of a busy magistrates court, including long suffering Des Davies (Mark Lewis Jones) and young whippersnapper Ranjit Singh (Phaldut Sharma).

Two series of the programme were broadcast, having been filmed back-to-back during the summer of 2001.

[5] Neither series has been released on DVD, but in 2020, both were released in their entirety on Amazon Prime Video under a deal with Acorn TV, making them available in the United States for the first time.

[6] The press descend on the court for the sentencing of a teacher who had a relationship with a pupil.