Friday, December 21st, 2007
07:00 Canterbury's Law
12:30 The Nancy Drew Mysteries
Canterbury's Law. Pilot. I didn't see her on er, but when I watched The Lost Room last year I thought Julianna Margulies was wonderful. I quite like legal dramas, too. And I'm a sucker for well-written strong female lead characters (when they come along). So, all told, Canterbury's Law would have to be pretty dire to make me dislike it.
Guess what?! It's pretty dire! One of those shows which bends over backwards to make everyone else really dumb to make it's central character seem smart. Super-smart characters only work on TV when you are in awe of them and their smartness (House, Columbo). But if you're at home thinking about how dumb everyone else is, and how you yourself could easily do/say the things the lead character is responsible then you got a pretty shabby hour of TV. Canterbury manages to totally pull apart a leading prosecution witness because... the script ensures that he says something idiotic in his statement, which she then reads back to him and uses to make fun of him. Later on, she is able to break the cool, calm exterior of the Real Killer because... it is really, really, really easy to make him lose his cool. So much so that you have cause to wonder has any other person every spoken to the guy? I ask because the writing/actor gives the impression that even the most basic question (hey, buddy, what time is it?) would cause him to fly off the handle, rant and foam at the mouth.
What a yawn-inducing, disappointing hour of TV.
The Nancy Drew Mysteries. Episode 8. Nancy's first solo adventure of the second season is a lacklustre affair. When Nancy spies an old school chum stealing a diamond necklace from a store, she follows her and discovers that the girl (now an up-and-coming tennis star) is a kleptomaniac. She steals without even knowing she is doing it!! Apparently. Anyway, Nancy is then hired by the girl's father to, um, I'm not sure exactly. Cover up the girl's crimes or something? Something the normally very law-abiding Nancy is more than happy to do. Things pick up at the mid-point of the episode when the story shifts to Las Vegas and the girls gets mixed up in a major cat burglary scandal. Nancy feels sure that her client (kleptomaniac though she may be) is certainly not up to being a major cat burglar and there is a lot of fun to be had from trying to figure out who the real culprit is, from the healthy list of suspects. Even better, the resolution is satisfying and the answer makes sense. Provided you don't think about it too much.
Susan Buckner debuts here as the third actress to play Nancy's sidekick and she's very pretty and funny. Before this Ruth Cox played a different character and, of course, Jean Rasey was the best of the bunch playing George for the duration of the first season. Why they got rid of her is a 'Nancy Drew Mystery' to me.
Canterbury's Law, The Nancy Drew Mysteries
