Television

Standard Of Review: Will Shonda Rhimes's Move To Netflix Bring About The First Great Streaming Legal Show?

It's a good time to be streaming, according to our culture critic Harry Graff.

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Shonda Rhimes (Ms. Magazine / Liberty Media for Women via Wikimedia)

It’s a good time to be streaming. In addition to the big three streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu), the broadcast and cable networks themselves are trying to get into the game. CBS already offers CBS All-Access, which houses current CBS shows and others– including legal drama The Good Fight — that air only online. Disney announced last week that it will be starting its own streaming service. Channels like HBO, FX, and AMC have or are about to have online subscription services for those viewers who don’t pay for cable, even though (for now) there are no shows that are available only online. And more importantly, these streaming services are paying for top talent. Netflix recently struck a deal with the Coen Brothers to make a limited-series western. David Fincher produced a Netflix series, Mindhunter, that comes out in October. And most importantly for this column, on Monday Netflix announced that mega-producer Shonda Rhimes is leaving ABC to join the streaming service.

I’ll freely admit that I am not a Shonda  Rhimes fanatic. The only one of the many shows that she produces that I actually watch is How To Get Away With Murder, and I only do so because of this column. Rhimes and her production company ShondaLand scored their first hit with Grey’s Anatomy, and have followed that up with Private Practice, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, and among other things, the upcoming legal drama blandly titled For the People, which, judging from the trailer (always a terrible idea, I know) looks to follow the How To Get Away With Murder model of a cast full of attractive people perpetually sleeping with each other.

Importantly, none of the ShondaLand shows currently airing on ABC are moving to Netflix. But in a world in which network television is dying, Rhimes is one of the few reliable hitmakers. Particularly given the pulpy nature of many of the ShondaLand shows, one would think that Rhimes would excel in a medium that is free from the constraints of network television. To be fair, despite my frequent criticisms of How To Get Away With Murder, it is a fairly dark show for network television. After all, its title promises tips about how not to be imprisoned for killing another human being. Its main character is manipulative and an alcoholic. One of its lead characters was brutally murdered last season. But moving to streaming means that Rhimes can utilize that dark tone and, say, omit any “cases of the week” or extraneous storylines. And a show with frequent cliff-hangers is perfectly made for streaming. Furthermore, most streaming shows, by their nature, are not followed, analyzed, and reviewed as comprehensively as shows that air on regular television. I have had to deal with this myself whenever I’ve written about streaming shows, frequently discussing them numerous weeks after they are originally released. So a streaming series can theoretically get away with more mistakes.

The Shonda Rhimes news brings up the question of why there have been so few streaming legal shows that have found their way into the public consciousness. I mostly enjoyed last year’s Amazon drama Goliath, even though I certainly had my issues with it. While Amazon doesn’t release its streaming numbers, my own anecdotal sense is that Goliath was not a hugely popular show, despite getting a belated renewal for a second season. The Good Fight had a solid start, but I never understood why it aired on CBS All-Access instead of regular CBS. And Netflix’s Daredevil is more of a superhero show than a legal show.

One would think that a legal show would be a perfect on a streaming network. Legal cases have numerous participants, all with their own (hopefully) interesting back-stories. Each side thinks that they are the protagonists and that the opposing side is the antagonist. And trials always have plenty of twists and turns. Basically, my ideal legal streaming legal series would be a better version of Goliath — ditch the cringe-worthy side characters, and write the defendant with more shades of gray than the archetypical “evil corporation.” It’s also important (and I cannot stress this enough) to hire at least one writer who has been a full-time practicing lawyer in, say, the last ten years, so the show does not become a punchline among lawyers.

Is Shonda Rhimes the right person to steward such a show? I do not know; maybe she’ll just make How To Get Away With Murder or For The People by a different name. But I am glad she is being given the chance to try something not on a network.

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Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at [email protected]. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.

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