If the last thing you need is one more place where you have to buy a TV show, then you’d probably be delighted if the first original drama on CBS All Access, The Good Fight, were a piece of junk.
Sorry. It’s not. The Good Fight, a spinoff from CBS’s acclaimed The Good Wife, turns out to be a really good show.
Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo, one of her new comrades.
You can see for yourself Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, when CBS’s regular broadcast network airs the first episode.
But that’s all the taste you will get unless you then subscribe to CBS’s new pay streaming service, CBS All Access. The other nine episodes in the first season will only be available on All Access, also on Sunday nights at 8.
All Access, which runs $5.99 a month with commercials and $9.99 a month without, essentially gives viewers anytime access to multiple episodes of regular CBS shows, plus some exclusives.
The Good Fight, created by the same team of Robert and Michelle King that produced The Good Wife, is the first All Access exclusive. The second will be a new Star Trek: Discovery series, scheduled to premiere later this year.
The Good Fight is a good start.
Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart enters a brave new world.
Most of the main Good Wife characters have moved on, notably including Julianna Margulies’s Alicia Florrick. But The Good Wife also built strong supporting characters, and the focal point now shifts to Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski), who was mostly Alicia’s friend and occasionally her rival.
Equally important, Diane has a new pal. Maia Rindell (Rose Lesley) is a raw rookie of a lawyer who happens to be Diane’s goddaughter, and a series of events quickly brings their professional paths together.
As terrific as Baranski has been, and continues to be, Lesley plays the game on the same level.
The Good Fight opens in deceptive calm, with Diane retiring from the law firm she founded and dreaming of a new stress-free life in the Italian villa she’s about to purchase.
Truth is, we’d have a pretty boring TV show if that plan went down. Look, here’s Diane having a glass of wine and watching another Tuscan sunset.
Happily for us, less so for Diane, it turns out she’d invested all her money with a family friend named Henry Rindell (Paul Guilfoyle), who gets arrested for being the new Bernie Madoff.
Long story short, Diane is broke. The partners, led by her old antagonist David Lee (Zach Grenier), won’t hire her back. So she has to find another job, in an unexpected placed that sort of takes her back to her moral roots.
The Ponzi scheme story works well, weaving in just enough mystery and uncertainty to create a substantial subplot. Besides Henry Rindell, the players involve his wife Lenore (Bernadette Peters) and Diane’s estranged husband Kurt (Gary Cole).
Diane Lockhart, right, with the Rindells — Lenore (Bernadette Peters) and Henry (Paul Guilfoyle).
What lifts The Good Fight above an ordinary decent drama, though, is the addition of Maia’s story. As her last name suggests, she’s Henry’s daughter, and while she was not involved with the Ponzi scheme, it’s crippling a good part of her life.
She soldiers on, with the help of her supportive partner Amy Breslin (Helene Yorke), and she soon becomes a twin heart of the show.
True, the nervous newbie who rises to the challenge despite crushing odds is not a unique character in TV or movie drama. Lesley makes Maia feel fresh.
As with The Good Wife, the supporting cast here is strong and well drawn. Delroy Lindo stands out as Adrian Boseman, who starts on the other side of the table from Diane, and Sarah Steele creates a winning character in Diane’s street-smart new secretary Marissa Gold.
Then there’s Cush Jumbo as Lucca Quinn, another smart new attorney who helps throw Diane a lifeline.
As a pay service, All Access is not bound by FCC content guidelines, which probably means it’s admirable that The Good Fight waits almost 20 minutes before dropping its first f-word. The first couple of episodes show no more flesh than a broadcast show.
That may not turn out to be the template, but that’s how it looks coming out of the gate.
It still might have been easier if The Good Fight weren’t worth your time. It is.
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