Goliath — The Shadow of Justice

"En the cathode-ray universe, where series reproduce like cancer cells in the liver of pop culture, Goliath emerges as a benign but annoying tumor: a legal drama with the ambition of a shark and the elegance of a drunk lawyer in a bar fight. Created by David E. Kelley —that magician of television scripts who has gone from writing dialogue for Ally McBeal to trying to convince us that lawyers can be heroes— and Jonathan Shapiro —a former prosecutor who probably dreamed of being John Grisham but ended up settling for being the guy who whispers in Kelley's ear—, the series presents itself as a judicial thriller with film noir pretensions, but with the subtlety of a sledgehammer in a defamation trial. Billy Bob Thornton, that actor who seems carved out of oak wood and with a facial expression of someone who has just smelled someone else's fart, plays Billy McBride, a lawyer who has fallen lower than the prestige of Harvey Weinstein at a feminist film festival. His office is in a seedy motel, his most frequent client is his own whiskey bottle, and his only ally seems to be a stray dog that, ironically, has more dignity than most of the secondary characters. But, oh surprise, this broken man decides to rise like a Lazarus with a hangover to face a law firm so powerful that it makes Skadden Arps look like a small-town law office run by Law for Dummies interns.