The Premise
David E. Kelley's eight-episode Apple TV+ adaptation of Scott Turow's 1987 legal thriller, the same book Alan Pakula turned into the 1990 Harrison Ford movie. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Rusty Sabich, chief deputy prosecutor in the Chicago prosecutor's office, who catches the case when a colleague he was sleeping with is found murdered. First hour sets up the marriage (Ruth Negga as his wife Barbara), the office (Bill Camp as his mentor boss, Peter Sarsgaard as the political rival who wants the case), and the affair, before shoving Rusty into the defendant's chair. Renate Reinsve and O-T Fagbenle round out the ensemble. It's a domestic thriller wearing a courtroom drama's suit.
The Case For
Gyllenhaal is doing serious work here. He's playing a guy who might be guilty, might be innocent, definitely deserves neither of those outcomes, and he lets you feel every one of those possibilities in the same scene. Sweaty, twitchy, unreliable in the good way. Bill Camp is Bill Camp, which means every quiet look lands. Ruth Negga gets more to do than the wronged-wife role usually offers, and she takes it. Kelley knows how to write a courtroom scene the way Sorkin knows how to write a walk-and-talk, and the procedural bones of this thing are sturdy. The direction from Anne Sewitsky and Greg Yaitanes keeps it moving. It looks expensive without looking sterile.
The Case Against
Eight episodes is at least two too many for this story. The 1990 movie ran two hours and told the same tale without the extended marital-crisis interludes that pad the middle here. Kelley falls in love with his own red herrings. Sarsgaard's prosecutor is written as a cartoon at times when a scalpel would do more damage. Some of the domestic scenes drift into standard prestige-TV grief-face territory, and you can feel the show reaching for depth it hasn't earned. The New York Times reviewer called Gyllenhaal "sweaty, jumpy and over the top," which is either a compliment or a criticism depending on your tolerance for lead actors going for it.
Who It's For, Who'll Bounce
If you liked Big Little Lies, The Undoing, or the recent glossy Kelley whodunit assembly line, you're the target. Fans of the Turow novel or the Ford movie will find enough new to justify the trip, or enough changed to be annoyed. If you want a taut two-hour thriller, watch the Pakula. If you bounced off Anatomy of a Scandal or thought The Undoing was mostly Nicole Kidman's coat, this'll test your patience by episode three. People who need their prestige TV to Say Something About Society will find this refreshingly uninterested in doing that. It just wants to be a nasty little murder story with famous people in it.
The Ruling
WORTH IT because the meat and potatoes here are executed well. Kelley isn't reinventing the legal thriller and he isn't trying to. He's serving a genre dish, and the ingredients are premium: Gyllenhaal committed, Camp reliable, Negga elevated, courtroom scenes that actually work as courtroom scenes. It's not preaching at you, it's not lecturing you, it's just trying to keep you guessing for eight hours. It mostly does. The length is the sin. As a limited series with real stakes on the ending, it earns its slot on the queue. Don't expect it to change your life. Do expect to text somebody your theory around episode five.
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