montag
05-08-2007, 02:44 AM
Presumed guilty
August 5, 2007
Legal dramas used to get a kick out of defending the innocent. Now, it's all about locking up the crims and throwing away the key. Melinda Houston reports on vengeance TV.
Something very interesting, kind of insidious and just a little bit worrying is happening in TV land. While our hunger for crime drama has never been more voracious, the menu is becoming more restricted.
We've always loved to see cops chasing down robbers. And, to a lesser extent, we've loved to see those robbers facing the full wrath of the law. But we have also, traditionally, enjoyed seeing the weak defended against that same wrath, to see justice win out against the system.
Perry Mason, still one of the most successful and longest-running legal dramas in TV history, had it right. The defence lawyer believed that a person was innocent unless proven guilty. He knew that being accused of something was not the same as being guilty of something. He took on any case that piqued his curiosity, regardless of potential fee - and, often, the more hopeless seeming, the better.
More importantly, we loved to watch Mason doing it. We weren't at all uncomfortable with the idea that those firm-chinned, well-meaning homicide detectives were capable of error. Or that the entire dramatic premise was predicated on them being so.
Likewise, for years Rumpole of the Bailey delighted us with the combination of cynicism, erudition and flashes of compassion. Horace Rumpole loved nothing better than a nice juicy murder to defend, and while he didn't win nearly as often as Perry, and would as cheerfully defend a guilty man as an innocent one, he believed in the law - including the bit that says everyone is entitled to a competent defence.
By the early 1990s, former defence lawyer David E. Kelley had cornered the market in legal drama. Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, Susan Dey and Corbin Bernsen gave us the low-down on high-powered legal manoeuvring in L.A. Law, and for almost a decade we thrilled to their spirited defence of both commercial and criminal matters, their championing of the lowly as well as those who could actually afford McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak's fees.
Then came Ally McBeal. Sure, Calista Flockhart's character was hopeless in almost every sense, and the show was much more about her miserable love life than truth, justice, et cetera. But beneath and behind her tiresome angsting there was always some lawyering going on.
Kelley's ideas about the legal process reached full flower in The Practice. Bobby Donnell believed in - and frequently articulated - those fundamental precepts of Western justice: that every man is innocent until proven otherwise, that every accused is entitled to a competent defence.
Despite their very different hues and nuances, all these shows were predicated on that fairly simple thesis. The proper administration of justice requires both a prosecution and a defence. And the defence exists because the prosecution - both cops and lawyers - are (at best) fallible and (at worst) dangerously single-minded.
But even Kelley lost faith. Bobby Donnell had a nervous breakdown and Kelley brought us Boston Legal. (If anything was to convince us that defence lawyers are an absolute joke, William Shatner and James Spader as the ludicrous Denny Crane and his weirdo man-friend Alan Shore, respectively, would be it.)
It seems The Practice was the last gasp of the noble defence lawyer. In the 21st century, defence lawyers are venal and conscienceless. A criminal charge is as good as a conviction (if only it weren't for those pesky defence lawyers). And trials only exist as lip service to an annoyingly outmoded system.
The whole Law & Order franchise is built around that idea. Yes, evidence and ideas are tested in a court of law. But the Law (cops) and the Order (prosecution) part of the equation are never mistaken. Merely outwitted.
It is well documented that so convincing are the cops on the CSI shows that in real courts in the US, juries refuse to believe forensic evidence could be wrong. If the CSI team say it's so, then that's the end of the story.
Now, enter James Woods as Sebastian "the Shark" Stark, an insanely successful defence lawyer who sees the error of his ways and agrees to head up a crack prosecution team instead.
Debuting on Seven tomorrow at 9.30pm, Shark opens with Stark successfully defending a wrongdoer. Sure enough, his client goes on to do even more wrong. (Well, what do you expect if you let defence lawyers in on the gig?) So Stark decides to employ his ruthless jury-eating tactics for niceness rather than evil. And thus a new series is born.
All of which is fine. Because the punishing of villains is always going to be satisfying telly. And in an increasingly out-of-control world, it's natural to want to see wrongs righted and order restored.
What's a little disturbing is our blind faith in prosecutorial forces, our burgeoning distrust of and disrespect for a competent defence. As real events here and overseas are proving repeatedly, police aren't always right.
Prosecutions can become politicised. And just because someone is accused of something, that doesn't mean they did it. It isn't the job of a defence lawyer to set villains free. It's their job -as much as it is the job of the cops and the prosecution - to protect the innocent. So let's celebrate that, too.
As the great Perry Mason himself said: "I have merely asked for the orderly administration of an impartial justice...To my mind, that's government. That's law and order."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv--radio/presumed-guilty/2007/08/03/1185648111004.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
August 5, 2007
Legal dramas used to get a kick out of defending the innocent. Now, it's all about locking up the crims and throwing away the key. Melinda Houston reports on vengeance TV.
Something very interesting, kind of insidious and just a little bit worrying is happening in TV land. While our hunger for crime drama has never been more voracious, the menu is becoming more restricted.
We've always loved to see cops chasing down robbers. And, to a lesser extent, we've loved to see those robbers facing the full wrath of the law. But we have also, traditionally, enjoyed seeing the weak defended against that same wrath, to see justice win out against the system.
Perry Mason, still one of the most successful and longest-running legal dramas in TV history, had it right. The defence lawyer believed that a person was innocent unless proven guilty. He knew that being accused of something was not the same as being guilty of something. He took on any case that piqued his curiosity, regardless of potential fee - and, often, the more hopeless seeming, the better.
More importantly, we loved to watch Mason doing it. We weren't at all uncomfortable with the idea that those firm-chinned, well-meaning homicide detectives were capable of error. Or that the entire dramatic premise was predicated on them being so.
Likewise, for years Rumpole of the Bailey delighted us with the combination of cynicism, erudition and flashes of compassion. Horace Rumpole loved nothing better than a nice juicy murder to defend, and while he didn't win nearly as often as Perry, and would as cheerfully defend a guilty man as an innocent one, he believed in the law - including the bit that says everyone is entitled to a competent defence.
By the early 1990s, former defence lawyer David E. Kelley had cornered the market in legal drama. Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, Susan Dey and Corbin Bernsen gave us the low-down on high-powered legal manoeuvring in L.A. Law, and for almost a decade we thrilled to their spirited defence of both commercial and criminal matters, their championing of the lowly as well as those who could actually afford McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak's fees.
Then came Ally McBeal. Sure, Calista Flockhart's character was hopeless in almost every sense, and the show was much more about her miserable love life than truth, justice, et cetera. But beneath and behind her tiresome angsting there was always some lawyering going on.
Kelley's ideas about the legal process reached full flower in The Practice. Bobby Donnell believed in - and frequently articulated - those fundamental precepts of Western justice: that every man is innocent until proven otherwise, that every accused is entitled to a competent defence.
Despite their very different hues and nuances, all these shows were predicated on that fairly simple thesis. The proper administration of justice requires both a prosecution and a defence. And the defence exists because the prosecution - both cops and lawyers - are (at best) fallible and (at worst) dangerously single-minded.
But even Kelley lost faith. Bobby Donnell had a nervous breakdown and Kelley brought us Boston Legal. (If anything was to convince us that defence lawyers are an absolute joke, William Shatner and James Spader as the ludicrous Denny Crane and his weirdo man-friend Alan Shore, respectively, would be it.)
It seems The Practice was the last gasp of the noble defence lawyer. In the 21st century, defence lawyers are venal and conscienceless. A criminal charge is as good as a conviction (if only it weren't for those pesky defence lawyers). And trials only exist as lip service to an annoyingly outmoded system.
The whole Law & Order franchise is built around that idea. Yes, evidence and ideas are tested in a court of law. But the Law (cops) and the Order (prosecution) part of the equation are never mistaken. Merely outwitted.
It is well documented that so convincing are the cops on the CSI shows that in real courts in the US, juries refuse to believe forensic evidence could be wrong. If the CSI team say it's so, then that's the end of the story.
Now, enter James Woods as Sebastian "the Shark" Stark, an insanely successful defence lawyer who sees the error of his ways and agrees to head up a crack prosecution team instead.
Debuting on Seven tomorrow at 9.30pm, Shark opens with Stark successfully defending a wrongdoer. Sure enough, his client goes on to do even more wrong. (Well, what do you expect if you let defence lawyers in on the gig?) So Stark decides to employ his ruthless jury-eating tactics for niceness rather than evil. And thus a new series is born.
All of which is fine. Because the punishing of villains is always going to be satisfying telly. And in an increasingly out-of-control world, it's natural to want to see wrongs righted and order restored.
What's a little disturbing is our blind faith in prosecutorial forces, our burgeoning distrust of and disrespect for a competent defence. As real events here and overseas are proving repeatedly, police aren't always right.
Prosecutions can become politicised. And just because someone is accused of something, that doesn't mean they did it. It isn't the job of a defence lawyer to set villains free. It's their job -as much as it is the job of the cops and the prosecution - to protect the innocent. So let's celebrate that, too.
As the great Perry Mason himself said: "I have merely asked for the orderly administration of an impartial justice...To my mind, that's government. That's law and order."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv--radio/presumed-guilty/2007/08/03/1185648111004.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1