From Henry Fonda’s reasoned soul-searching in 12 Angry Men to Fiz Stape’s desperate pleas of innocence in Corrie, there’s something about courtroom dramas that strikes a primal chord.

New five-part TV series The Jury, which started last night, focuses on the retrial of a man accused of killing three women. The jurors include an autistic teenager, a devout Christian, a teacher having an affair with a pupil and a woman illegally standing in for her boss.

The drama highlights a centuries-old system which hangs on the collective power of the life experience of 12 people.

I hadn’t had a great deal of life experience when I was called up for jury service, within days of leaving school.

I spent a fortnight on two different cases at Leeds Crown Court and, having never been in a courtroom before, I found it fascinating but intimidating.

As a fairly shy teenager, I wasn’t confident enough to have much of a say in the jury room and I felt a world apart from the older, more vocal members.

I remember one middle-aged man dominating discussions, interrupting everyone, and insisting that he wouldn’t send anyone to prison. If I’d been a few years older, I’d have contributed more, but I think it was wasted on me at that age.

The process did open my eyes to the intricacies of the court system, though. One morning I was called down with 14 other people for a rape case. When it came to selecting 12 people for the jury, three young women, including myself, were asked to leave. It seemed jury service wasn’t as straightforward, or random, as I’d expected.

A case I did serve on involved a man alleged to have slept with an underage girl he was looking after. Even though we were pretty sure this had taken place, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him and the judge’s summing-up steered us towards a ‘not guilty’ verdict.

I didn’t feel comfortable with it, though, particularly when I went to catch a bus home and saw the girl’s distraught family at the bus stop. Thankfully, they didn’t recognise me.

At least I wasn’t on the complicated fraud case that had been lumbering on for weeks. I used to wince at the sight of those exhausted, hollow-eyed jurors slumped in the canteen.

Trial by jury isn’t a perfect system, especially in an age of online social networking when confidential information soon becomes public knowledge. But returning a verdict following discussion from varied perspectives is surely preferable to a decision made by one man in a wig.