The Medium is Not Enough

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA Network

“Characters welcome.” That’s the USA Network’s ostensible motto. But it has a secret one, too – its true motto: “Fluffy characters welcome.”

White Collar? Fluffy. Psych? Fluffy. In Plain Sight, Fairly Legal, Covert Affairs, Royal Pains. Fluffy. Everyone’s essentially nice. Even Burn Notice has Michael’s mum and a lost innocent in need of help every week.

So it’s something of a relief and surprise to find that USA’s new lawyer drama, Suits – I know, I know, like we need another drama about lawyers – is only a little bit fluffy. Because pretty much everyone in Suits is a bastard. Or a thief.

In it, Mike Ross, a college drop-out finds himself in a drug-deal gone wrong. He runs into a job interview for a law firm that only hires Harvard graduates, but because the guy running it, Harvey Specter, is a total dick – and because Ross has a photographic memory that has already allowed him to pass the bar without going to law school – Specter hires him. All they have to do now is teach Ross the difference between the law you find in books and evil, amoral practical law, while keeping the fact that Ross isn’t a Harvard graduate from everyone else in the firm. Oh, and work out what to do with Ross’s briefcase full of drugs.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Suits 1×1”