Think of David E Kelley and one name immediately comes to mind, doesn’t it? Wonder Woman.
Hang on. Scratch that. Remind me to use that intro in a year or so. Let’s start again.
Think of David E Kelley and one name immediately comes to mind, doesn’t it? Ally McBeal. Kelley, a former lawyer, was the creator of Ally McBeal and since finishing that show, has gone on to corner the quirky, largely female-oriented, lawyer show market, with programmes such as The Practice, Girls Club and Boston Legal.
Now, he’s over at NBC with Oscar-winner Kathy Bates with – yep, you guessed it – a quirky, largely female-oriented, lawyer show that sees Bates playing Harriet Korn, one of the country’s top patent lawyers, who finally realises that patent law is dull and decide to take up criminal law instead. Taking her secretary along for the ride, Korn sets up shop in a rough part of Cincinnati, where she quickly recruits Nate Corddry (Studio 60), one of her former patent law adversaries, to help defend universally ethnic alleged criminals against injustice – and sell shoes.
No really, they sell shoes as well. Told you it was quirky. Here’s a trailer and a much more informative promo based on the original pilot, which co-starred Ben Chaplin instead of Nate Corddry.
In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, SyFy In Canada: Mondays, 10E/P, Space
Do you see that headline? “Being Human (US)“. That’s a lie that is.
Because although everything up to now would have told you this was a US remake of the hit BBC3 show about a vampire, werewolf and a ghost house-sharing and coping with life together, this is actually a Canadian remake: it’s made by a Canadian production company in Canada.
Does that change your expectations? I have to confess it lowered mine. Sure, Canada now makes things like Being Erica, but it also makes things like The Listener and Lost Girl, and has a whole history of rubbish fantasy shows for us to point at and worry about.
Either way, you probably want to know what they’ve done to it to adapt it for the US (and Canada). Is everything identical, just set in America and with different actors? Or is this an altogether different show?
You probably also want to know if it’s any good. Follow me after the jump to find out. Once you’ve watched the trailer, that is.
In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA Network. Starts January 20th
Ooh look. Another show on USA Network. Wonder if it’ll be one of those “characters” ones. This one’s about a lawyer. How will it be a little off the wall and kooky, I wonder?
Well, the answer is it’s about an ex-lawyer, not a lawyer. The show stars Sarah Shahi of Life not-quite-fame as lawyer Kate Reed, who gives up her life as a lawyer to become a mediator: she sits down with both parties to a law suit and tries to work out a settlement that works in both their favours, without recourse to lawyers and an expensive trial.
At least, that’s what it should be like in practice. Because this being a TV series, you don’t expect Kate to just sit there and chat to people, do you? No, she has to do some investigating and figure out the truth and make things right and just and stuff.
Oh, and because this is the USA Network, she’s got to live on her dead dad’s house boat, have an on-again, off-again relationship with her ex-husband (Michael Trucco from BSG), be employed by her step-mother, have a personal geek assistant who plays D&D and solve all these problems with charm and idiosyncrasy.
What’s it called? Well, because Kate is fair of face (“Less lawyer, more appeal” as the poster tagline goes) and because she’s only loosely associated with the legal process now, it’s called Fairly Legal. Hmm.
Hey, you know what else the poster says? “Don’t go to court – go to Kate!”
As you may have guessed by my infrequent posting last week, I was working my backside off so didn’t have time on Friday for "What have you been watching this week?" (aka "Your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?")
Sorry! But it’s here now.
So, after the jump, Cougar Town, Episodes, Kidnap and Ransom, Michel Roux’s Service, Modern Family, Shameless (US) and Southland. I’ll probably do proper reviews of Lights Out and Off the Map when I’ve caught up with them and I’ve already talked about The Cape. Oh, and we tried watching a bit of Wild at Heart on ITV but it was awful. Not making that mistake again.
Since there was something of a Tron thing going on last month, it seems appropriate that we should delve into one of wunderkind producer Glen A Larson’s little 80s projects that absolutely in no way was influenced by Tron – Automan.
This saw mild-mannered police computer programmer Walter Nebicher (played by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s son, Desi Arnaz Jr) get all creative in his home hours and write ‘Automan’, a computer program that could not only think and solve crimes, it could also create its own holographic body that looked human(ish), despite being largely a glowing mass of blue.
Automan (played by musical theatre star Chuck Wagner) also had a little polyhedral sidekick called Cursor that he could communicate with and that could draw him all manner of objects, including clothing, and forms of transport, ranging from cars (a Lamborghini Countach usually) to futuristic helicopters, aeroplanes and motorcycles. Being a hologram as well, the car could turn at 90º, but being a special kind of hologram, it was actually possible for it to be solid or pass through things as Automan desired. Weirdly, Walter could actually enter inside either Automan or his car, and become equally solid or intangible.
Automan’s only weaknesses? He needed an awful lot of power so he could usually only come out at night when people weren’t using their toasters and other household gadgets. Oh, yes – and video game guns.
All sounds very plausible and scientific, doesn’t it?
Assisting Walter, Automan and Cursor was Roxanne (Heather McNair), Walter’s co-worker and long-time crush who eventually becomes his girlfriend when she finds out about Automan and helps them to solve a few crimes together. At the same time, his other co-workers couldn’t be trusted so although Walter was out there solving crimes, he couldn’t tell anyone, not even top cop Jack Curtis (Robert Lansing – best known for his work on The Equalizer and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues) and particularly not his technophobe boss played by Gerald O’Loughlin.
Automan, himself, was a curious personality who was best buds with Pacman and Donkey Kong, but needed to learn about human behaviour as well, despite being programmed with the complete works of Sherlock Holmes, amongst other things. Unfortunately, his learning often went wrong, with one episode dealing with an unfortunate case of soap opera overload.
Now, vehicles that move at 90º? A guy who’s a computer program and largely glowing blue? A polyhedral sidekick that communicates in computerese? Hmm. That does sound a bit like Tron, doesn’t it? Why didn’t the network, ABC, get sued for that, Tron having coming out the year before Automan? Oh yes, because they hired two of Tron‘s producers, Donald Kushner and Peter Locke. Can’t sue yourself, can you?
The show ran for 12 episodes from 1983 to 1984, a 13th episode having been made but not aired. There was actually a surprising variety of stories in that run, with Automan doing everything from pretending to be a vigilante cop to helping a girl group to joining a motorcycle gang along the way. As you might have guessed the tone was quite light, with everyone being as cheesy as hell and most episodes seeing Automan’s naivety and Dudley Doright qualities exploited for laughs, and the day saved by Automan’s breaking of the laws of physics at every turn.
Anyway, I liked it when I was a kid. Here’s the pilot episode in case you missed it – weirdly, it’s not an ‘origins’ episode, but just more or less leaps into the narrative after a voiceover explanation of the plot, which was also used in subsequent episodes. You can watch more on YouTube, but unfortunately you can’t get it on DVD. Enjoy!
