Need a little instant authority? Go to Curtis-Hall or to Anna Deavere Smith, as the clerk of the court, whose job is whatever the plot wants it to be on a weekly basis. It’s a smartly assembled three-tier cast that takes a lot of pressure off of the young stars. If there’s a stealth star on For the People, it is casting director Linda Lowy, who has performed similar duties on all of the Shondaland shows. It’s also easy to appreciate its tightness and economy. It’s easy to imagine how much more material a show like this would be able to mine if it had a cable or streaming running time. The third episode, the one with the whistleblower, is especially adept in whipping between how Sandra and Kate were assigned to the case, approach negotiations and how each develops admiration for the other. So what of it? The characters here are believably smart, talk fast and banter amusingly.įor the People is hardly the first legal show to look at cases from each side, but the way it lets the back-and-forth structure dictate pacing often feels fresh. For the People isn’t as good as The Good Wife. Did a show like The Good Wife prove that you can take on issue-of-the-week storytelling and still make the cases themselves memorable and quirky (and layer in soap opera serialization at the same time)? Sure. ![]() This is going to be the case that’s about whistleblowers and document leaking.” Or, “Ah, somebody has something to say about mandatory minimums” or “Fun, somebody read an article about courts using sentencing software.” Cases that, in the real world, would unfold over weeks or months or years can be quickly dispatched by unsupervised junior litigators in 42 minutes, with each side getting to make its points in ways that are balanced and reasonable. You can usually tell within two minutes, “Oh, OK. ![]() Even when there are semi-recognizable guest stars, the procedural emphasis is almost always on the bigger-picture issue, rather than the intimate human details of the trials. Each week, the teams face off in the Mother Court in two or three cases, building grudging respect or enmity through the adversarial process. That group features Britt Robertson’s Sandra and Wesam Keesh’s Jay. The prosecuting team also employs Seth (Ben Rappaport), who is dating Allison ( Jasmin Savoy Brown), part of the gang of public defenders led by Jill Marcus (Hope Davis). Their ranks include a son of a senator groomed for bigger things ( Regé-Jean Page’s Leonard Knox) and the ultra-efficient Type-A Kate Littlejohn (Susannah Flood). ![]() The conceit is simple: There’s a group of young AUSAs mentored by Roger Gunn (Ben Shenkman). The action is set at the Southern District of New York Federal Court, where Judge William Byrne ( Vondie Curtis-Hall) tells a pack of young lawyers that “the cases are hard, the stakes are high” and welcomes them to the “Mother Court.” There’s lots of talk about the court’s significance, as if that’s really relevant to viewers. ![]() In this respect, For the People is much more like ABC’s hit drama The Good Doctor in its comfortingly familiar approach to genre storytelling.Ĭreated by Scandal veteran Paul William Davies, the first episode spends a lot of time setting up the lofty ambitions of what is really a very simple premise. Don’t go into For the People expecting the sensationalist procedural melodrama often associated with the Shondaland brand and you might find yourself appreciating the simple pleasures of a deep ensemble cast delivering reams of clever dialogue and grappling superficially with the legal issues of the day.
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