Right for this Fight to air
It seems ridiculous that a new US legal drama starring Christine Baranski is unavailable to watch here, writes James Croot.
The only true binge-watching I’ve done this year was at 35,000 feet. Long-haul flights are perfect for settling in and becoming engrossed in a single show, rather than flitting about between movies (especially for notorious aircraft nonsleepers like myself).
However, as I settled in for a trip between Auckland and Vancouver in September, one particular title on Air New Zealand’s inflight entertainment system caught my eye – The Good Fight.
That’s because, despite it debuting in the US in February, it’s still unavailable to watch on any legal platforms – streaming, free-to-air or satellite – in this country. It’s a situation that seems utterly ridiculous given the calibre of the cast, the sharpness of the writing, the morethan-acceptable audience figures and rave reviews it’s earned elsewhere and the fact that it’s the spinoff of a well-known and much-loved show.
Yes, as the title hints at, this
10-episode series is set in the same world as The Good Wife, Michelle and Robert King’s award-winning legal and political drama that ran for seven seasons between 2009 and 2016.
Known for tackling hot-button topics (sometimes even before they hit their headlines), unexpected twists (it delivered one of the few character deaths in the past decade that NOBODY saw coming) and creating memorable characters, it also featured a steady string of fabulous cameos from everyone from Nathan Lane to Michael J Fox and Stockard Channing (a happy result of the show being filmed in Broadway’s backyard, despite being set in Chicago).
Lead actress’ Julianna Margulies departure necessitated the end of Wife, but it always felt like a world that could live on without her. And so it proves, with Fight taking up the action a year later and focusing in on Christine Baranski’s legal matriarch Diane Lockhart.
After a lifetime dedicated to law, Lockhart is preparing for retirement and her dream of owning a place in the French countryside. But all that is shattered after an enormous financial scam evaporates her savings and destroys the reputation of her goddaughter, recent law-school graduate Maia ( Game of Thrones‘ Rose Leslie), whose father has been implicated as being behind the ponzi scheme.
Worse still, her old law firm are refusing to take Lockhart back, and so, desperate to keep afloat financially, she joins AfricanAmerican law firm Reddick, Boseman & Kolstad and a world very different from what she is used to.
As with Wife’s multi-faceted storylines, this provides plenty of opportunities for the Kings and new co-writer Phil Alden Robinson ( Field of Dreams, Fletch) to muse on any number of topics facing America. While it feels more focused on a single over-riding arc than a typical Wife season, it does explore issues like employee rights, police brutality and fake Twitter accounts in cogent and compelling ways.
Then there’s the joy of characters from the original series popping in. The terrific Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo) and Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele) play key roles, while the likes of Gary Cole’s Kurt McVeigh, Carrie Preston’s Elspeth Tascioni and Dylan Baker’s Colin Sweeney and Matthew Perry’ Mike Kresteva remind us of why they were scene-stealers in the first place.
A spin-off to rival Frasier and Boston Legal in its maintenance of quality, The Good Fight deserves a far better fate here than being left up in the air.