It was guilty pleasure viewing. But the laws of entertainment have been rewritten

And so I was glad only my dog was there on Monday (he shares my study with me, knows all of my media-consuming secrets/habits but is always reliably tight-jowled about them) to watch me watching Justice Lee's live delivering of his, the judge's, verdicts in the case.

But what an unusual live entertainment the judge's delivery turned out to be.

An estimated 45,000 of us watched all or some of it and this columnist, strangely beguiled, watched all two-and-a-half hours of it. Time flies when one is being deeply engaged.

The unexamined life is not worth living (as Socrates and this columnist never tire of saying) and in a moment I will try to examine what it was that so deeply and blamelessly engaged someone (this morally flawed columnist) who had not tuned into the broadcast with honourable intentions.

Meanwhile those of us who have taken an intense interest in the Lehrmann defamation case really must own up to that intense interest's unhealthy, shameful side. The trial was pornographic, in the wider sense of that p-word. The trial's contents' (even in its last days getting down into the titillating gutters of cocaine and prostitution) had irresistible appeal to one's debauched Mr Hyde, one's decent and ethical Dr Jekyll elbowed aside.

On Monday morning my Dr Jekyll was horrified that I was settling in indoors, curtains closed lest neighbours glimpse my shame, to watch the online streaming of Justice Lee's summing up of the whole filthfest of the trial.

"But Ian, the weather's gorgeous!" Jekyll pleaded.

"You should be outdoors engaged in some wholesome activity. Why not go and read Keats' Ode To Autumn to the autumn-tinted trees of the National Arboretum?"

But my Mr Hyde turfed my Dr Jekyll out of the room.

Strangely, though, Justice Lee's oration turned out to be an intellectually wholesome entertainment in its own right.

And I use the word "entertainment" respectfully here in the way in which one might use it of a fine performance of a Shakespeare play or of an opera. And Justice Lee's performance on Monday of his 324-page verdict took longer than an average performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream or of Puccini's La Boheme.

My Mr Hyde, who has no attention span to speak of and who had been hoping for something short and shocking and lurid and realising Justice Lee was not going to oblige, fell asleep after 10 minutes. My discerning Dr Jekyll rejoined me and together, our dog in our joint lap, we paid rapt attention.

Some of the entertainment's allure had to do with how contrary it was. Almost every entertainment we watch on our devices' screens is audio-visually fast and frenzied and loud, its sensory jingle-jangles tuned to audiences' shrivelled attention spans and appetites for short, sharp, cheap thrills.

But here, weirdly, was just one drably costumed man sitting, talking (never once getting up to dance or to sing) for ages and ages.

And in so plain a setting. There was nothing decorative on the wall behind him and nothing on his bleak desk save a carafe of water with which he occasionally lubricated his busy, busy speech organs.

There were no interruptions by advertisements and (what bliss!) not a note of accompanying music. ABC radio and television now accompanies with mindlessly tinkling mood-sculpting background music every occasion on which anyone has anything to say and is going to take longer than 20 seconds to say it.

Best of all, though, was what Justice Lee had thought and written.

Leaving aside whether or not one agreed with his findings it was a treat to listen to an intelligent man trilling intelligent observations, insights and ideas.

I loved Justice Lee's recognitions of humans' complexities, his diagnoses of how nuanced and confused our words, deeds and motives are, of how truthfulness and untruthfulness are seldom black and white but come in a range of hues.

His meditations on how wrong it is to have fixed assumptions of what a woman who really has been sexually assaulted will remember and think and say (the dismissing of her as a liar if she doesn't meet all the fixed criteria) was splendidly intelligent and compassionate and true. Jekyll and I clapped our hands in rapt appreciation of what his honour said on that subject.

Days later one is still struggling to explain how and why the two-and-a-half hours were so engaging.

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It had something about it of an engagingly read audio-book reading of a fine novella. And of course the defamation trial story his honour read to us had, like a gripping and plausible novella, a rich cast of grotesque, disgusting and tragic human beings. Just as one cannot put down a gripping novella one could not turn off Justice Lee's delivery of his gripping findings.

One day, too, the operatic trial and its verdicts will be made into the long-awaited great Australian opera.

The part of Justice Michael Lee will be sung by a majestic bass-baritone and his famous aria "Having escaped the lion's den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat" will always send audiences into rapt ovations.