Thanks to law shows today, like the many Law and Order spin-offs and the god-awful CSI franchises, people want cop/court shows to be over the top, contain lots of fights, have twists and turns in the evidence and be in your face. This show builds slowly and focuses on the fact that average people are deciding someone else's fate. I don't usually like court shows (I can only watch L&O up until when the case goes to trial, because the trials are so boring), but I like this show. The problem is that I wouldn't have bothered to notice this show if it wasn't a Fontana/Levinson project. Because I loved Homicide so much, I can appreciate what they're trying to do here. There's only been three episodes so far, but I like that the cases have been "average." TV shows always have to have a case that's been "ripped from the headlines," and is so sensational that it's impossible to believe. Instead, The Jury had an episode about an inmate who killed a priest during a riot. One juror wondered what the point was of trying him, because either way the man was going back to jail to finish his sentence from a previous crime. Yet the writers (including James Yoshimura, who wrote Homicide's much-celebrated "Subway" episode) still use that "back-page" subject matter. It is their willingness to go into typical crimes that makes this show interesting. Instead of going for the shocking like CSI does, they find shocking things in everyday life.
Yeah I remember The Beat too. ;)
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