Happily married with two children, Colin Friels hasn't had much to do with the Family Court, but he now knows what a "terrible place" it can be. Friels spent some time watching the court at work while preparing for his role as judge David McKinnon in the ABC telemovie Marriage Acts.

"Yeah," says Friels, "I went to the court, talked to a few judges, watched what happened, and I thought, 'Oh, God, what a terrible place to be.'

"I had no idea what it would be like ... it's messy and traumatic and not just for the husbands and wives and the families, but for the judges, too." And fertile ground for scriptwriter Anne Brooksbank, who once lived in the same street as a Family Court judge on Sydney's North Shore.

Brooksbank describes the story as one man's "black night of the soul", as a vengeful bomber makes McKinnon question the justice he has dispensed and his family life unravels around him.

Indeed, Brooksbank had Friels in mind when she wrote the part, hoping he would make the character sympathetic. "I thought it was very important for the audience to have sympathy with the character even though many people will not approve of his situation," she said.

For Friels, who stars opposite Sonia Todd, it was McKinnon the man rather than McKinnon the judge who interested him most.

"I did talk to one or two judges, but I'm not huge on deep, deep research - I tend to go by the script. I thought it was a good perspective of a judge as a man. Just a man with failings and all that sort of stuff ... I thought that was a useful community perspective, a man with flaws and all that, who sits in judgment, but one who is also capable of being judged himself."

Friels' next role is the lead in a stage production of Moliere's Don Juan at the STC next year, and he says he is "not fussed" about what happens in the meantime, happy just to play house-husband in Balmain. It is a well-earnt rest after a busy year filming Marriage Acts, The Farm (with Greta Scacchi) and the Network Ten telemovie, My Husband, My Killer, about the 1986 murder of Megan Kalajzich.

As with all his work, it is important for Friels that he comes across as believable in Marriage Acts.

"That's the hard part, I find - not acting, if you know what I mean, or not getting caught acting. It's about making McKinnon a real person. A judge can be anyone, but the trick is to just make him a man first, a real human being, and `judge' is just the job he does.

"McKinnon has got more flaws than most of the people he's judging; that's the point. And then people sit in judgment on him. I'm not trying to be trite and moralistic, but how can any of us judge in the end?"