Should Trials be More Interesting?

Law can often be dull. Contrary to popular entertainments, trials are often dreadfully dull. What you miss on TV or the big screen, for the sake of dramatic tension, are all the foundation questions and mechanical evidentiary things that are important to the record, but put the jury to sleep. With that in mind, should the lawyers involved - particularly the prosecutors - take care to make sure the jury stays interested in the proceedings?

They might want to take heed of this odd trial implosion in Australia, where three months and $1 million worth of work went down the tubes because of Sodoku:

In the District Court in Sydney, Judge Peter Zahra discharged the jury after hearing evidence from two accused men, one of their solicitors and the jury forewoman, who admitted that she and four other jurors had been diverting themselves in the jury box by playing the popular numbers game.

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She said four or five jurors had brought in the Sudoku sheets and photocopied them to play during the trial and then compare their results during meal breaks.

She admitted to having spent more than half of her time in court playing the game.

I have no idea how Australian law works, so I wonder if the mid-trial meltdown will preclude a retrial. I also wonder if, aside from the article's assertion that:

There is no offence under the NSW Jury Act for playing games or being inattentive to a degree that causes a trial to be abandoned.

the jurors can be held in contempt of court? Surely shirking your duty in the box is akin to trying to lie your way out of it (which rises to the level of contempt, IIRC).

That all being said, if it takes three months to try a drug conspiracy case, odds are for the retrial you need to either (a) throw some things out to streamline or (b) jazz things up to keep everybody's attention!