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Actors put Michael Jackson's `trial' on show for all to see

Every Tuesday through Saturday in wintery Britain, at 9:30am and 2:30pm, TV viewers can tune into the latest episode of Michael Jackson's trial in sunny California. Sort of.

With cameras banned from the California courtroom where the King of Pop is on trial for child molestation, an all-news TV channel has taken the bold step of faithfully recapping each day's proceedings with lookalike actors.

Each half-hour stars Edward Moss, a career Michael Jackson impersonator, as the defendant, with Jack Donner portraying judge Rodney Melville and Rigg Kennedy as the mop-topped prosecutor Thomas Mesereau.

From the Stars and Stripes in the background to the water glasses on the tables, not to mention the lawyers' repeated objections, no detail has been left to chance -- with helpful commentary added from a reporter at the scene.

`Exact words'

"The words are the exact words that are spoken in the courtroom," said Simon Burks, associate editor of Sky News television and executive producer of the reconstructions, made in partnership with E!, a US showbiz cable channel.

"When the [courtroom] trans-cripts come in, we choose the sequences we want to reconstruct and we give that to the actors," Burks said from Los Angeles.

Not that there's much time to rehearse: the actors read their lines off teleprompters, which are cleverly placed on the set so that the viewer is left with the impression of reality.

"The set is based on the actual courtroom," explained Burks. "The set designer and the director went to the courtroom and they copied it" right down to the furniture.

Since the real Jackson has yet to speak in court, lookalike Moss, 27, who for nine years has made a good living mimicking the pop idol, has had little more to do than look worried from time to time.

Burks says audience feedback has been good since the reconstructions began to grace the airwaves last Tuesday.

Ratings

"At the moment the audience is fantastic," he said. "We're getting very good ratings and a lot of people are very interested. It's going very well. If it keeps going like this, then we'll stick with it."

For viewers in Britain, the series recalls the vivid TV reconstructions of Lord Brian Hutton's judicial inquiry in 2003 into the suicide of David Kelly, a Ministry of Defense expert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

He had been the source of a controversial BBC radio report alleging that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government had "sexed up" intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Burks defends the genre, saying: "It is journalism -- we're just using a different way of telling a news story."

"Journalism doesn't have to be a reporter standing up in front of a camera outside a court ... We're reporting what is said in court. We're doing it in the best way we can. We're not dramatizing it at all."
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