In case you haven’t heard, Dick Wolf’s new show Conviction, which will premier on broadcast television on March 3, is available now as a free download from the iTunes Music Store.
Yr. ob. servant downloaded said program onto my trusty Video iPod and watched it last night. (I wrote about my only previous attempt at this activity here.) Here are my thoughts.
Given NBC’s ratings problems, they are undoubtedly concerned about the success of Conviction. Dick Wolf is their boy, contributing three successful shows to the current schedule: Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The network has had some success with The Office, thanks to iTunes downloads. Maybe if you get enough tech-savvy law students to buy the show through iTunes, you can build an audience.
Technically, the show is set in the Law & Order universe, with Stephanie March reprising her role of Alexandra Cabot, now back in the New York City District Attorney’s office. Fred Dalton Thompson makes a brief cameo as D.A. Arthur Branch. The show uses some of the same sets used for the quickly-cancelled Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Stylistically, it’s nothing like the L&O franchise.
What Conviction does resemble is ABC’s huge hit show Grey’s Anatomy. Let me count the ways…
- Rips the lid off a system, the legal system here, instead of the medical.
- Young good-looking cast. They drink in bars, hook up and have sex. They struggle to balance the personal and the professional.
- The lead character is a person of privilege with a well-known parent who is struggling to make it in his new job.
- Slightly wacky background music during the office scenes, to set the proper tone. Mike Post composes the score for Conviction (as he does for all the L&O shows); Danny Lux does so for Grey’s Anatomy. The two worked together on NYPD Blue.
- Use of pop songs in the soundtrack. David Gray was the one artist I recognized from the pilot.
- At the end of the show, the group hangs out in a bar.
- Shocker! It turns out that one of the female characters is sleeping with her boss.
- The promo for the next episode refers to two characters as “the rookie” and “the hot-shot.”
Elias Koteas makes an appearance as Mike Randolph, but is not in the series after the pilot. Too bad, because his was the most interesting character in the whole thing.
A number of the actors have appeared in the other L&O programs. This appears to be common practice with people popping up as sometimes the same character, such as Peter McRobbie‘s recurring character of Judge Walter Bradley, and sometimes as character actors playing different parts each time, even if it’s on the same show (e.g., Matt Servitto).
Final note: Damn, watching videos really does drain the battery on this sucker!
P.S. This is as good a place as any to mention that I was a big fan of Wolf’s failed 1993 series Crime & Punishment. Can somebody bring this out on DVD? Not to be confused with Wolf’s 2002 series Crime & Punishment, which was a documentary program about real-life court cases.