Legal procedural dramas are not exactly a new species of television show. Law & Order guru Dick Wolf himself tried to get two series about the NY district attorney's office off the ground in the L&O universe (or at least next to that universe), neither of which lasted more than a few episodes. Another super-producer, Steven Bochco, who is also not entirely unfamiliar with the terrain having produced L.A. Law and Murder One (and NYPD Blue too) is about to premiere his new, NY-based, legal drama on TNT.
Entitled Raising the Bar, the series stars Bochco vet Mark-Paul Gosselaar as well as Gloria Reuben, and Jane Kaczmarek. It's an ensemble drama which also features Teddy Sears, Nat
alia Cigliuti, Melissa Sagemiller, Currie Graham, Jonathan Scarfe, and J. August Richards. Half of the group works for the public defender's office, and the other half for the district attorney. Save Kaczmarek, Reuben, and Graham, they're all young and almost all are friends outside of the office too.
Gosselaar is at the center of everything as the tried-and-true public defender Jerry Kellerman who puts all of himself into each and every one of his cases. The premiere episode features him getting misty-eyed and being on the verge of tears more than once and less than believably. He's young, brash, will fight tooth and nail for his clients, and is completely uninterested in politeness and tact.
Kellerman alternatingly does battle and drinks with the folks from the district attorney's office. While his compatriots do their best to leave work at the office an
d in the courtroom, Kellerman is unable to, which routinely gets him into fights with his friends. In short, he's a character we've all seen over and over again.
In fact, through the first three episodes there is little in any of the characters that the audience won't instantly sense as already being very familiar. This is perhaps most true for J. August Richards' Marcus McGrath, who works for the district attorney. While some will recognize Richards from his starring role on the Joss Whedon series Angel, others might remember that he's played a prosecutor in the NY district attorney's office before… on Dick Wolf's Conviction. Richards plays his part well, he's also very charismatic and compelling on screen, but there certainly is a sense of déjà vu that accompanies his role here.
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Article comments
1 - ian
I'll be watching more than one episode to wait for it to get good!
2 - Ari
Raising the Bar (RTB) is very different than most court or investigative shows. I love it. It finally shows the defense's side of things and that sometimes they are guilty and sometimes the story is alittle incomplete. The Law and Order and other crime shows don't have the character developement like RTB does. There is alittle romance, alternative life style issues, abuse, family court etc, that are in the court cases and cross over into the main character's lives. The TV shows in the past have usually been one or the other.
Not to be a spoiler to anyone who hasn't seen Season 2....(if you have I warn you of a spoiler alert) When I first saw RTB I wasn't sure if I could get past Zack Morris in a Court room, but the long, dark hair, the zeal for justice and care for people really got me into the show and off the Save by the Bell memories. Then, the Season 2 comes out and he cuts his hair. I was really sceptical b/c his hair cut is similar to the Zack Morris Character. But I realized the genious of the writters. The first season got me to like Jerry Kellerman for who he is not a Zack Morris Look-a-like. And so by the second season, Zack Morris is long gone and the new look is more perfessional. It's got great writting, the fair and unfair of our Judicial system, gruelling cases, alittle romance, and most important relationships between people.
I give it a 9 out of 10