Coming from producer and writer Steven Bochco, the new legal
drama “Raising The Bar” premieres Monday at 10 p.m. on TNT.
Steven Bochco could be considered one of the founders of TV
drama, as since the 80s, he has been the one behind many of TV’s most popular
and interesting shows such as “L.A. Law,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Murder One,”
“Over There” or “NYPD Blue.” Taking this fact into consideration, Bochco’s new
drama is not bad, but still, it’s not too worthy of praise.
The opening episode presents us with Jerry Kellerman, played
by Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who is a young public defender, who gets so frustrated
over a miscarriage of justice that he eventually ends up joining his client in
jail.
Actually, most of the characters are young lawyers, split in
two groups: the earnest, idealistic public defenders, who are guided by a
compassionate boss, Rosalind Whitman (Gloria Reuben) and the inexperienced
prosecutors, who are overseen by cynical Nick Balco (Currie Graham).
All these young and hopeful lawyers work in unrealistically
bright and nice offices and look unrealistically sexy. The only real-looking
lawyer, whose fault is the lack of attractiveness, dies in the very first
episode from heart attack. There’s no place here for lawyers looking worse than
a model.
The drama’s story focuses, obviously, on Jerry Kellerman,
who plays the role of the rebel without a cause, but with rumpled clothes and
messy hair (probably the least elegant guy in the office). He is very patient
and caring with his clients and every week he presents his case in front of
the same judge (played by Jane Kaczmarek), who hates him, in spite of all his
qualities.
From the very first episode, the series gets very
predictable and a bit clichéd. The group of public defenders are kindhearted
and brave, always in a struggle to defend society’s victims, who are usually
unethically attacked by the prosecutors. The judge is also made to be seen as
crazy, mean, erratic and vengeful.
Also, in the first episodes, all of the defendants are
either innocent people who were framed or characters dealing with major
problems, that anyone would sympathize with and who are unfairly punished. So
this could be called something of a battle between good and bad, where the
public defenders are good, while the prosecutors and the judge evil…
Still, Bochco claims that the series takes no side, but, on
the contrary, it gives “equal time to both points of view.” He may have wished
that in the beginning, but that is not what the viewers see…
The series was filmed in Los Angeles by Steven Bochco
Productions and ABC Studios. The supervising producer and writer is David Feige
and the director is Jesse Bocho. The story was co-written by Feige and Steve
Bochco.
