Summary: The Fall TV Season has started, but where are the new legal shows?
The Fall 2015 TV season is full of new ideas, but where are the legal shows? Photo courtesy of Zap2It
The networks have unveiled their new shows for the fall season, and we’re seeing everything from ballerinas to Muppets. While there seems to be a fair share of new superhero or medical dramas, there is a surprising lack of new legal shows. In fact, the two new shows with a legal connection are a far cry from the traditional courtroom drama:
The Grinder
Rob Lowe, veteran of Parks and Recreation and West Wing, is returning to television this fall as an actor who’s played the part of a lawyer in a court room drama on TV. When the television show ends, the actor returns home to Boise, Idaho. He believes his tenure as a TV lawyer qualifies him to join his family’s real-life law firm. His brother, played by Fred Savage, resents that his real-life legal career is upstaged by his brother’s fictional one. You can check out the comedy at 8:30 p.m. E.T. on Fox. In the meantime, here’s the trailer, courtesy of Fox:
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
The CW’s new musical dramedy, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, features an attorney who quits her biglaw job in Manhattan and moves to Southern California to find love. The trailer shows a pill-popping, corporate lawyer who cocks her head at a TV ad: “Ask yourself: when was the last time you were truly happy?”
Apparently this resonates with the heroine. She runs into an ex-boyfriend and immediately strips off her (stifling, super lawyerly) suit jacket, breaking into song and dance on the streets of Midtown. She soon stalks the boy to Covina, California, where her new employer sees Harvard, Yale, and Mandarin language skills on her resume and asks, “What the hell is she doing here?”
Brought to you by the screenwriter of “Devil Wears Prada” and the director of “500 Days of Summer,” we’re pretty sure “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” will either be a cult hit or one of those guilty CW pleasures you watch in secret with a bottle of wine. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend premieres October 12th. Check out the trailer from CW here:
Luckily, there are still a few on-air law shows returning this fall, and they promise to deliver. (SPOILER ALERT! If you’re not up to date with the following shows, you may want to stop reading).
How to Get Away with Murder
Last season, we met ruthless law professor Annalise Keating (Emmy Award-winning Viola Davis), whose nefarious husband Sam had been murdered by one of her legal interns. The beginning of the show focused on the events that led to Sam’s death, and the rest of the season explored the cover-up of the murder, which resulted in the killing of a troubled witness, Rebecca (Katie Findlay).
The first episode for this season, It’s Time to Move On, premiered on Thursday, September 24, on ABC. The episode was packed with action. The show revealed who killed Rebecca, featured a case of two adopted siblings who allegedly murdered their parents, and introduced a guest star! Famke Janssen appeared as Eve, a lawyer and Annalise’s former lover. Eve is in town to defend Nate, the man Annalise framed as Sam’s killer. If all this wasn’t enough, the show ends with a bludgeoned Annalise dying on the floor, setting us up for season two’s longstanding whodunit.
The Good Wife
The Good Wife premiered on September 22, 2009, and each season it continues to deliver. The show began with “good wife” Alicia Florrick (Juliana Marguieles) publicly standing by her philandering politician husband Peter (Chris Noth), but it quickly proved that it was not an examination of a Stepford Wife’s life of desperation. Alicia Florrick began her legal career in season one, and we the audience got to see her rise, from becoming partner of Gardner Lockhart to starting her own firm to winning and losing the role of State’s Attorney.
Season seven of The Good Wife doesn’t appear on CBS until October 4, Sunday, but we hear the episode will focus on Alicia reviving her career by representing clients looking for bail in bond court. With The Good Wife’s history of quality writing and acting, we know we’re in for lots of legal intrigue, but we’re most excited that Vanessa Williams has been announced as a new series regular.
Law and Order: SVU
Law and Order: SVU is the last remaining Law and Order franchise on air, and it’s now in its seventeenth season! The series was created by Emmy Award-winning producer Dick Wolf, and it follows the detectives of New York’s Special Victims’ Unit and the attorneys who bring those cases to justice.
On September 17, Wednesday, two premiere episodes were shown on NBC. The series is a procedural, and almost every episode features the SVU detectives solving mysteries with lots of twists and turns before the ADA prosecuted the case. While this season doesn’t appear to be doing anything new, it is still an enjoyable show that remains fresh by taking stories “ripped from the headlines.”