“Lincoln Lawyer” (Netflix) If you are taking it easy after a mild reaction to a Covid booster shot, this is a watchable series. The acting ranges from miscast to okay, the plot easy to follow, and the relationships amusing. Violence is mostly off-screen and rarely quirky. I liked the first season better than the second– the most recent, but critics seem to disagree with me on that.
“Extraordinary Attorney Woo” (Netflix) This Korean series has a lot going for it. The South Korean star, Park Eun-bin, plays an autistic whale-obsessed genius lawyer, with the tics and involuntary body movements often associated with the autism spectrum. She also happens to be beautiful and awkwardly charming. According to KDrama fanatics friends , the trajectory of the love relationship is consistent with the genre, as are other elements. Besides the very high entertainment value, I have learned something about Korean culture with each episode: the judicial system, of course, the social customs, and the history. For example, the one I watched the other night revolved around the attitudes of South Koreans toward North Korean defectors. Here’s the link to an amusing personal blog that fastidiously comments on the genre: Kdrama Gmamas
“The Burial” (Amazon) I have saved the bast for last. Unbelievable as it is, Amazon Prime actually includes this among the free-to-subscribers choices! Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones portray the main figures in a 1990’s David and Goliath courtroom case involving the “Death Industry”. Foxx brilliantly plays Willie Gary, son of an African American sharecropper, who ultimately became the richest lawyer in Florida. Tommy Lee Jones is Jeremiah O’Keefe, the nearly bankrupt white funeral home owner who hires Gary to sue the ruthless and slimy Canadian corporation Lowen Group that put him in that position. (and I thought Canadians were supposed to be so nice!) From what I have read, the film (terrifically directed by Maggie Betts) changes a few details, but nothing that interferes with the basic elements of the case.
New York Cynic 