In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, ABC
TV news producer – sexy job? Probably not. Mainly just people sitting down, looking at spreadsheets, working horrible hours and getting an ulcer while trying to work out where today’s top story could come from.
Criminal defence attorney – sexy job? Probably not. Mainly just people sitting down, looking at abstruse papers, working horrible hours and getting an ulcer while trying to work out where an obviously guilty client’s defence is going to come from.
But when you stick them together, hey? Sexy, right?
Nope. Two ulcers, that’s what. Duh. But Notorious nevertheless tries to convince of the two careers’ combined sexiness by using the simple tactic of removing reality from the equation altogether.
Like CBS’s Bull, Notorious is ‘inspired’ by real people’s lives – in this case, those of criminal defence attorney Mark Geragos and Larry King Live news producer Wendy Walker. Like Bull, that means it’s almost certainly nothing like their lives, but a big fat development check will still be heading their way.
The lovely Piper Perabo (Covert Affairs) plays the top news producer who’s also best friends with top defence attorney Daniel Sunjata (Graceland). He gives her scoops with all his most media-worthy clients, she gives him the heads up when sh*t starts heading their way – it’s all win-win for them both.
Then Sunjata’s top billionaire client, who coincidentally happens to be married to Sunjata’s ex-girlfriend, appears to wrap his car around a person and Perabo and Sunjata are having to help each other out without ruining their friendship. Except things aren’t quite as they seem and before you know it, Perabo and Sunjata are investigating the crime themselves – and each other.
Even without clients claiming they’d taken pain medication that caused them to ‘sleep drive’, this is nonsense of the highest order. Improbably, Perabo’s assistant happens to be a former escort, a handy former career that helps her to secure all manner of scoops and is in no sense stigmatised. And maybe life on Larry King Live was a lot stranger than we imagine, but Perabo’s star anchor (Kate Jennings Grant) spends most of her time in her underwear, shagging rappers before she’s due to be on-screen. Oh yes, shagging rappers who organise indoor barbecues in her dressing room. That’s not unlikely, is it?
Sunjata presides over a slightly more plausible firm that includes the likes of J August Richards (Angel), except he’s the kind of go-to top attorney who’ll go to a car impound lot at night so he can extract a great big bag of cocaine and dispose of it, rather than get someone else to do it. I wonder if that’ll look a bit encriminating?
There is struggling in Notorious something interesting being said about the interplay between the media and the law when it comes to celebrities and how the truth is a rapidly diminishing aspect of cable news that the quest for ratings is obscuring. Unfortunately, said message is struggling beneath a layer of absurdity that makes Scandal look like a documentary about the Eisenhower White House years.
I wish the cast well in their future careers, but you should try to help speed them on their way, by not watching this Notorious and watching the rather marvellous Cary Grant/Ingrid Bergman thriller instead.