This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I want to strenuously object, Your Honor, to the Fox network's obvious attempts to dumb-down television with its scandalous and mind-sucking legal drama, "Canterbury's Law."
I object to its obvious lapses in realism.
I object to its unlikable and morally-bankrupt defense attorney, played by "ER's" Julianna Margulies.
I object to the good-looking but vacuous young co-stars who work behind Margulies' desk but don't even look old enough to run a high school mock trial.
And I object to the clichéd, run-of-the-mill storylines about creepy defendants who look guilty but really aren't.
Is there a judge in the house to sustain my objections?
The show debuts tonight on KSTU Channel 13 at 7 p.m. If you plan to watch it, just be prepared to do a lot of eye-rolling.
Margulies, who played the determined nurse Carol Hathaway in "ER," plays Elizabeth Canterbury, a tough-as-nails defense attorney who is as flawed as one of her ill-conceived opening arguments.
In the opening scene of the pilot alone, we discover that Canterbury is cheating on her husband - and with her current client no less. That's enough to get her disbarred on the spot.
But her outlandish behavior doesn't end there. She fires her secretary because "she's stupid," one of her aids impersonates a prosecutor to interview a witness without counsel present, and Canterbury herself gets arrested or handcuffed twice in one episode.
Um, is she the lawyer or the criminal?
All of this legal nonsense is slapped into the story for dramatic effect, but what's even more offensive is that Fox and the show's producers think Margulies' greatest assets are her legs, which they tend to show a lot in lengthy shots of her walking.
There are the other standard subplots that muddle this legal mess: She and the main prosecutor hate each other's guts, and there are dark secrets in her past involving her missing son, which of course has created friction with her husband (played by Aidan Quinn).
Legal eagles will find the show's grip on reality less than firm, and lovers of simply good drama will find the characters and their relationships too hackneyed, even for TV.
It's a shame too. Margulies is a fine actress and proves she can hold her own in a crowd of good thespians (she did with the likes of George Clooney). But the network is just exploiting her name for a series that is hardly of her acting caliber.
"Canterbury's Law" breaks about a dozen laws of good television drama, but its biggest crime is assaulting the viewers' intelligence.
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* VINCE HORIUCHI can be reached at vince@sltrib.com or 801-257-8607.