Thu 12 Feb 2015
A TV Review: CANTERBURY’S LAW “Pilot Episode” (2008).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Drama[5] Comments
CANTERBURY’S LAW. Pilot episode. Fox, 10 March 2008. (Season 1, Episode 1.) Julianna Margulies, Ben Shenkman, Keith Robinson, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Terry Kinney, Ardan Quinn, James McCaffrey. Guest Cast: Charlie Hofheimer, Boris McGiver, Alison Bartlett. Creator/screenwriter: Dave Erickson. Director: Mike Figgis.
This is a series that came and went very quickly. In fact, you might even say that it sunk without a trace. With only six episodes aired before it was axed, I’m surprised that it came out on DVD, but it did.
Julianna Margolies (best know, perhaps, as the good wife on The Good Wife), here plays Elizabeth Canterbury, a fiery, tough-minded and determined defense attorney who (and here’s the gimmick) is willing to break all of the rules to get her clients off.
And in this pilot episode, she pulls off all the stops (telling her client to lie on the witness stand) in order to get the real killer on the stand, where she knows she can break him down. What makes this subterfuge necessary is that her client’s initial confession was coerced by the police by denying him the meds he needed.
There is all kinds of back story that is brought out along the way, including her affair with a private eye, one which she has broken off (she also happens to be married), but his assistance on the case she does not mind in the least asking for.
As gimmicks go, I didn’t mind this one, and as a matter of fact, I liked it. Elizabeth Canterbury certainly is skirting the edges of legality, and in fact (as you can tell) she verges into illegality far more than Perry Mason ever did. And playing her to perfection, Julianna Margulies is an actress that makes me sit up and like it.
She was on The Sopranos before this one, then a nurse on ER for a season or so before starring in The Good Wife, a series I’ve never seen a single episode of, and now I’m convinced I should.
February 12th, 2015 at 8:24 pm
“then a nurse on ER for a season or so”
Bit of an understatement there since she was George Clooney’s girl and the final appearance when they got together was one of the biggest events on television and the series biggest rating.
A little like saying Sherlock Holmes did a bit of detecting.
I blinked and missed this one. Six episodes, well it beat Tammy Grimes by five.
February 12th, 2015 at 11:06 pm
Originally 13 episodes had been ordered. The ratings from the beginning were nightmarishly bad for Fox from the beginning. After six episodes were filmed a writer’s strike hit. Fox moved it to die on Friday night and never made any more episodes. It was replaced by HOUSE reruns.
Here is a promo for the pilot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XQ_o5wmzrY
February 12th, 2015 at 11:34 pm
David
I must have missed that episode of ER. Or in other words, George Clooney was on TV?
February 12th, 2015 at 11:41 pm
Michael
I figured there must have have been some mismanagement on the part of Fox, or something else dire that cut this series short. I’d forgotten about the writers’ strike. It was like the year without a World Series.
I’ve watched four more episodes of the series since I wrote this review a couple of weeks ago, and I’m enjoying them quite a bit. In the 4th and 5th episodes Elizabeth is in the process of being indicted for jury tampering (she’s guilty), her marriage breaks up, very very dramatically, and I just don’t understand why the ratings were so bad to begin with.
Sometimes you have to accept what there is to enjoy, and go on. For me, that’s going to be THE GOOD WIFE. I have a feeling I’m going to like that one.
February 14th, 2015 at 1:54 pm
I’ve just finished watching the sixth and final episode. I’m happy to say that some of the plot threads of the overall story line were gathered up and closed — not all, but enough so that I can put the DVD set back on the shelf and be satisfied with it.
The rating for the first episode was 4.9 with a share of 8; the rest of the series averaged a 3.5 rating with a share of 6.5. I don’t think are very good numbers, so even with the writer’s strike, I’d say the show was in trouble. It was consistently either 3rd or 4th in its time slot, which can’t be good.
Most commenters on IMDb as usual watched a different show than I did, but quite a few agreed with me. One negative commenter called the show “cheesy,” a word that if I were to use, I’d reserve it for a series such as MARVEL’S AGENT CARTER, but that I guess only goes to show you.