The Returned, Channel 4, review Al Pacino. Dame Helen Mirren. David Mamet. In any order you like, that's an impressive line-up. Add a controversial take on the murder trial of a legendary pop producer and Phil Spector (Sky Atlantic, Saturday) was bound to be a winner. Wasn't it? Not as such. Anyone who keeps up with the American media will know this much-hyped HBO drama got a critical drubbing when it aired in the States. Mamet, its Pulitzer Prize-winning writer/director was accused, essentially, of letting convicted murderer Spector (Pacino) off the hook for the 2003 shooting of cocktail waitress Lana Clarkson at his Hollywood mansion. All the more reason to watch. The scenario covered just a few weeks of Spector's first trial, which resulted in a hung jury (another found him guilty; he's now in prison). It focused entirely on his relationship with his attorney Linda Kenney Baden (Mirren). The victim barely got a look in, other than dismissal as a burnt-out Tinseltown publicity seeker. Pacino indulged in some entertaining scenery-chewing as the determinedly eccentric, gun and wig-loving faded Sixties pop genius. It wasn't a wholly admiring portrait; this Spector was delusional and several tracks short of the full album. But it was sympathetic, a fact underlined by Mirren's flawless performance as Baden, one of the few on Spector's million-dollar legal team who, supposedly, connected with their client and believed him innocent. Phil Spector was highly watchable, even compelling. It might even have been admirable had it not been for a script that expended most of its energy in angry disquisitions on how America's rich and famous can no longer expect justice in court due to the envious public and a dishonest celebrity-obsessed press. "He's being tried for the murder of O J's wife," said one character pithily, if moronically. But the film's biggest problem was its makers" refusal to accept moral responsibility for it. Before the first frame rolled, one of the most convoluted disclaimers ever put on screen asserted that the drama was a "work of fiction" that, while "inspired by actual persons," was "neither an attempt to depict the actual persons, nor to comment upon the trial or its outcome." This was no mere libel dodging. Mamet washed his hands similarly in interviews. And this failure in the courage of its convictions rang hollow through all the grandstanding and drivel about truth, justice and the American way. As drama it simply ran out of steam, or hot air at least - concluding, contradictorily, that Spector's oh-so-noble defence team might have secured an acquittal but for their client's hare-brained insistence on wearing fright wigs in court. Sheesh, you just can't help these gun-toting pop geniuses.