Smooth palms

The Lincoln Lawyer (2024) is what TV used to be like all the time. The production values are much higher – there's more location work, the clothes and props are better, and a certain automobile company is really getting its money's worth – but the show's basics are a checklist of what fills a medium-sized screen with happiness. It's charming, a little sentimental and the writing's as tight as a drum. The cast is dynamite. The directors and writers do well to tamp down the airport-novel style elements and elevate the more everyday stuff. The threat of violence, imprisonment or extradition in America today is real and present: a modern US crime show doesn't need to add darker aspects.

The show was a David E. Kelley project for CBS before Netflix picked it up. There's a meme circulating about the "rules" Netflix imposes on TV series which I'm too bored and old to read but I would be very surprised if these aren't the "rules" TV writers have followed all along, i.e. preshadowing, using characters' names often so the viewer remembers who they are, recapping the plot, narrating the action and so on. It's not chance that many original TV series started off as radio plays. We listen to TV and watch films. And we don't need a Greek tragedy's worth of plot arc every hour.

The most enjoyment I get from the show is watching familiar sites of California and Los Angeles slide by. I love that place and I pine for it.

Lincoln Lawyer novelist Michael Connelly sees the show as part of the world:

"I draw a correlation between what's going on in this show and what's going on in the world: We've been knocked down by the pandemic and other things for the last couple years, and we're all trying to get our mojo back... The defense attorney is the lone guy against the well-funded and populated police departments and prosecutors. It's a classic underdog story about a guy getting back on his horse and that's what we're doing in society. That makes it the right moment. Did we know that when we were going to make it? No. I think we really got lucky."