Laying down the law on Capital's mean streets

IT'S 1991 and in a smart New Town flat, the cream of Edinburgh's legal society are moving enthusiastically but awkwardly to Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams. One moody-looking young man, however, is avoiding the dance floor, skulking at the edges, dragging on his cigarette.

"I don't dance," he snaps, when asked. But dancing is about all the fresh-faced but already hard-bitten lawyer Greg McDowall doesn't do in the STV series The Advocates.

Investigating crimes that the police have given up on? Tick. Braving thugs with guns in the name of justice? Tick. Making the heart of newly-qualified upper crust advocate Alex flutter so much that she chucks in a career-making move to Brussels to help him with a seedy case involving drugs and prostitutes? Tick.

Back in the day, The Advocates attracted an audience of millions to watch the exploits of Greg, played by Edinburgh-born Ewan Stewart, his boss Katherine (Isla Blair) and Alex (Stella Gonet). Set in the city, it contrasted the high-powered, respectable New Town world of the legal profession and the sleazy, dangerous existence of the Leith addicts and criminals they encountered in the course of their work.

Now the latter-day Jekyll and Hyde tale is being released on DVD, giving fans another chance to see the first series.

One person who will be putting in a request for a copy is Ewan. Better known these days for his roles as the doomed first officer of the Titanic in the 1997 blockbuster and more recently as ex-con Daniel McKee in River City, he was on the other side of the law in The Advocates. "I played a lawyer, a kind of maverick lawyer, as these people often are, a kind of lawyer-private detective," he laughs.

"In the first series my character went everywhere by bus and had a dingy studenty flat. I went from that to a fancy little sports car, a nice little country cottage and a live-in girlfriend in the second, so I really shot up in the world."

In fact his girlfriend, Sarah Thompson, was played by Rachel Weisz. She is now a Hollywood star but back then she was a 21-year-old unknown in her first TV role. She played a music student at risk from a psycho who is bumping off buskers, a part she clinched just three months after she came to Edinburgh as a Fringe performer. Her part is mainly remembered now by for its nudity and steamy bedroom scenes, which at the time she described as "tasteful rather than torrid".

"She was great, good fun," remembers Ewan. Weisz wasn't the only well-known name to feature – Michael Kitchen, now starring in Foyle's War, also appears as a dodgy advocate, Robert Carlyle as a copper along with James Fleet, of The Vicar of Dibley. Fans will have to wait until the autumn to catch those stars when the second series is released.

Someone else who'll be snapping up a copy of the first series will be Eddie Cory. The 46-year-old from Liberton may not have had such a prominent part as Ewan but he did appear in every episode – in the title sequence. "A few weeks ago I was going through my old collection of videos and I found an advert for The Advocates – and there I was, walking up and down," he says.

Back in the early 1990s, Eddie was testing the thespian waters by taking on work as an extra. He appeared in Take the High Road, Taggart and Naked Video, as well as two appearances in The Advocates; firstly as a lawyer and secondly as a policeman. "They were always very insistent you bring your own socks. They give you the rest of the uniform but not the socks," says Eddie. Being an extra had its own challenges, he says, from dancing "like a loon" even though no music is playing to just walking to the right spot on time. "You have to be aware that although you are a very small cog in the machine, they tell you what to do and you have to do it – it's OK for stars to make mistakes but if it's just someone in the background you get told off."

For its time, the drama was topical and ground-breaking, and was a critical and popular success. Five years before Trainspotting brought the gritty reality of the city's drug-taking underbelly to the big screen, The Advocates featured scenes of an un-regenerated Leith and prostitutes shooting up. The fictional doctors fighting the city's HIV and Aids epidemic reflected the real-life pioneers such as Ray Brettle and Roy Robertson who prescribed methadone and handed out free needles.

Of course, the city has moved on – and so have The Advocates. Stella Gonet went on to star in BBC drama House of Eliott and works mainly in theatre now. Isla Blair has become a regular face on TV, appearing Holby City, Midsomer Murders and Casualty. As for Ewan, the son of singing legend Andy Stewart, he bowed out of River City at the end of last year and has just finished a run with the RSC of David Greig's Dunsinane. He's currently filming Eliminating Charlie Cookson in which he plays a Russian spy – but is struggling to master the few lines of Russian the script requires. "Russians must move their mouths in a slightly different way," he says.

With a successful 30-year career behind him, the 52-year-old actor was clearly never inspired by The Advocates to throw it all in and retrain as a lawyer. "It would have been a bit late," he laughs. "And with only five O levels, I would have been struggling."

The Advocates DVD is being released by Alba Home Vision on Thursday, priced 19.99