Title: Presumed Innocent
I was very excited when I heard that Apple TV was creating an eight part limited series based upon Presumed Innocent.
Presumed Innocent is without a doubt one of my favorite legal thriller novels. It could be very well be my favorite.
Written in 1987, it was Scott Turow's first novel. The protagonist is Rusty Sabich, an assistant district attorney to the district attorney Raymond Horgan. Carolyn Polhemus, another attorney in the office, is found brutally murdered. Horgan, a charming, backslapping pol, is fighting for his political life in an upcoming election. He assigns Rusty to the case, hoping for a quick arrest to help his reelection bid.
It quickly comes out that Sabich has been having a torrid affair with Polhemus. Knowing that he's not guilty and wanting to avoid the scandal of the affair coming to light, Sabich makes some dubious choices to protect himself.
These choices come to light, and along with other evidence, puts Sabich in a bad light. Horgan loses the election, ushering in new district attorney leadership, who immediately cast their suspicions upon Sabich. He is arrested and is put on trial for murder.
His defense attorney is Sandy Stern, a renowned defense attorney who works in quiet, mysterious ways. The judge is Larren Lyttle, an active, charismatic, and boisterous judge with skeletons in his closet.
In the novel, film, and television series, all of these facts are pretty much the same.
First of all, let's talk about the novel. The novel is set in Kindle County. It is clearly a stand-in for Cook County / Chicago. Turow practiced law in those courts. Turow, over this novel and several others, creates a Dickensian universe of characters that inhabit Kindle County. To me it has the richness of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. All characters are drawn in detail with interesting backstories.
Probably my favorite thing about the novel is the unexpected humor. Strewn throughout the novel are vignettes of black humor that, at times, are laugh out loud funny. Some I found myself re-reading these scenes immediately just because of my great enjoyment.
It does all of this and there is still a taut, thrilling, trial at the heart of it. Compared to other legal thrillers, it has a richness and complexity while at the same being true to the genre that is simply astounding.
Let's talk about the film. Even before the novel was published, there was a fight over its rights. It was eventually released in 1990.
Let's start with the director. Perhaps Alan J Pakula is not well known nowadays, but in this period he was known for directing the so-called paranoia trilogy of Klute, The Parallax View, and All The President's Men. It's safe to say that directing dense, complexly plotted films was his strength. He knows how to tell a story. He was able to succinctly distill Turow's 450 page novel into a two hour film.
Where the film is especially strong is in its casting. Leading off is Harrison Ford as Rusty Sabich. In 1990, playing tightly strung, emotionally repressed characters is right in his wheelhouse. He does great work here.
Brian Dennehey does a great job of playing the florid, ruthless, charismatic Raymond Horgan. Raul Julia is brilliant as the mysterious Sandy Stern. Paul Winfield plays Judge Larren Lyttle just right. Bonnie Bedelia plays Barbara, the brilliant if a bit troubled wife of Rusty. That's just the A-listers. If you want to see some West Wing cast before West Wing ever aired, this film has you covered. John Spencer is Sabich's investigator and Bradley Whitford has a small role as Stern's assistant lawyer.
Between the tight hand of Pakula and an outstanding cast, this is very good film. Because of the two hour time constraint, it does lacks the depth and richness of the novel.
Given how much I enjoyed the novel and the film, it's understandable that I was looking forward to the series. The series has an eight episode run and each episode runs about forty-five minutes. That comes up to about six hours of run time. Given that the novel runs over four hundred pages, I had high hopes that it would be able to take a similar deep dive into the dark corners of Kindle County.
Another problem that I was hoping to see addressed had to do with updating some of the aspects of the novel that, from the 2024 lens, cast it into a dimmer light. There are elements of racism and sexism that, in 1989, didn't even get a second comment. Even now, I'd say that it doesn't have a huge impact on the novel (although being a white man, I understand that I don't really get a vote). For instance, in both the novel and the film, Polhemus is depicted as a hyper sexual, zealously ambitious woman determined to ruthlessly sleep her way to the top. I don't even remember if there was a person of color in the film. Apparently Jeffrey Wright made his debut in this film, but it must have been a blink and you miss it kind of role.
So, I had high hopes. Some of those hopes were confirmed when I saw the much more diverse casting. Sabich's wife is Black. His investigator is a Black woman. The judge is a Black woman. All of this seemed promising.
I became moderately concerned when I saw that David E Kelley was the driving force of the series. He's credited as the creator. He has sole writing credit for at least two of the episodes and co-writing credit on several others.
I don't have a huge problem with Kelley. He's famous, if not legendary, for such series as LA Law, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Picket Fences, The Lincoln Lawyer, and many, many others (seriously many others, if you don't believe me just check out his wiki credits page; it's massive).
That many credits is kind what raised a red flag to me. Kelley is famously a fast writer. I'm not sure if he still does, but he used to just sit down and rapidly crank out scripts by furiously scrawling on a legal pad. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed many of his shows. It's just that, to me, his peripatetic writing style leads to plots that seem artificial and overwrought. There is just not a lot of room for subtle character growth and a slowly organically growing nuanced plot.
Alas, my concerns came to pass. Given six hours to fill, instead of using it to describe character back stories and/or to give rich breadth to the developing story, Kelley just throws in seemingly random sub plots that do not advance the main story. For some reason, Sabich's wife Barbara is tempted into an affair but then drops it, never to mention it again. Horgan has a heart problem at a key moment in the series. He just later magically reappears like nothing happened. I just can't get over the feeling that Kelley had this massive blank canvas that he could have used to tell, to use that adjective again, a Dickensian tale and it's just not something that is in his wheelhouse.
Another problem is with how he develops the characters themselves. Jake Gyllenhaal, like Harrison Ford, can ably play emotionally intense and repressed men. He does good work here. However, his wife Barbara (played by Ruth Negga) just isn't interesting. In the novel, Barbara is a brilliant mathematician with demons of her own. Here, Barbara is just the wife that stands by her cheating, possibly murderous husband.
In the novel and the film, Raymond Horgan comes across as kind of a Kindle County Ted Kennedy type figure. In the series, Horgan (played by Bill Camp) is as far from that as possible. He is a disheveled frumpy man with a permanently hang dog expression. Looking at him, I wonder how such a character could ever get elected district attorney in the first place. In the novel and the film, Sabich, the once loyal water carrier, and Horgan, the now deposed king, are understandably at odds with each other. Here, the shlumpy Horgan agrees to defend Sabich.
I mentioned that, in the novel and the film, Carolyn Polhemus is a bit much. In the series (played by Renate Reinsve), Polhemus is not some harpy sleeping her way to the top. Instead, she's meh. It's not clear why she took up with Sabich and why she gave him up. She's just an enigma that periodically shows up in flashbacks.
In the novel, Judge Lyttle is a force of nature with a booming voice that's a dictator in his courtroom. In the series, Judge Lyttle is a generic judge that could appear in any number of legal dramas.
Sandy Stern doesn't appear at all. At best, one of his assistants does, but other than expressing annoyance with Sabich, she doesn't have much to do.
Yes, I did watch all eight episodes, hoping against hope that it would get better. Don't get me wrong, it's not like it's a bad limited series. If I hadn't read the novel, I might even have been happy with it. It's just, with such rich source material, I expected much more.
It took a rich, dense, darkly humorous novel and converted it to a story arc that would not been out of place on The Practice.
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