The short life and long death of ‘Bluff City Law’
Perhaps not since an inoperably ill Bette Davis languished throughout the 104-minute running time of “Dark Victory” in 1939 has a death seemed as inevitable yet protracted as that of “Bluff City Law.”
The set-and-shot-in-memphis NBC legal drama ceased production in its title Mississippi River mini-metropolis in October, yet the network diagnosticians in charge of the case were reluctant to sign the death certificate. Instead, they consigned the remains — like the mummy of Mrs. Bates (to cite another, very different movie) — to the fruit cellar of streaming-service reruns and socialmedia fan forums, with the idea that fermentation would expedite resurrection.
The apparent hope was that the eyeballs of online viewers might multiply miraculously, like the loaves and fishes, to convince advertisers to subsidize the resuscitation of Elijah Strait (played by Jimmy Smits) for a second season of human-rights activism and jurisprudential derring-do.
Unfortunately for its fans and cast and crew (including dozens of Memphians), “Bluff City Law” was unable to generate the enthusiasm that occasionally can transform a near-miss into a try-again.
On June 15, NBC officials finally announced that “Bluff City Law” was canceled and would not return for a second season. Barring some unforeseen revival (the first “Star Trek” motion picture, after all, arrived a decade after the cancellation of the original series), the courageous and diverse lawyers of Strait & Associates will continue to exist only within the 10 episodes of the show’s first season, where they will battle opioid abuse, white supremacy and military conspiracy unto eternity, or for however long NBC’S new Peacock streaming service remains viable.
Made public by NBC during the waning minutes of prime time (in fact, the announcement came during the old “Bluff City Law” time slot), the news of the cancellation arrived like an anti-climax. For the most part, only people with a real personal interest (i.e., crew members) were still asking “Is ‘Bluff City Law’ coming back?” Most of the general Memphis public, if they thought of the show at all, assumed it already had been declared a goner.
Even most of the actors and producers who months ago were actively working to save the show on their social media feeds remained mum over the news of the cancellation, as if to admit that this particular battle had been lost long ago. “Bluff City Law” co-creator and executive producer Dean Georgaris
didn’t acknowledge the cancellation, instead devoting his Twitter feed for the past couple of days to promoting fan petitions and other efforts to rescue his other series, “The Baker and the Beauty,” which last week also was canceled, after a single season on ABC.
The abbreviated first season of “Bluff City Law” (six completed scripts remain unproduced) contributed about $35 million to the local economy, according to network estimates. So the demise of “Bluff City Law” represents an economic blow for Memphis and for the locals who had their fingers crossed for a second season’s worth of well-compensated employment.
But the cancellation also is a disappointment for the government and filmindustry boosters who had dreamed that a long-running Memphis-based network series would “grow” the area’s base of experienced film crew professionals and provide millions of dollars’ worth of promotion for the city, year after year, as happened in Nashville with “Nashville,” the country-music-industry prime-time drama that ran for 124 episodes over six seasons, from 2012 to 2018.
While the show was in production last year, Memphis Tourism president Kevin Kane said “Bluff City Law” would provide an hour’s worth of pro-memphis publicity to millions of potential tourists each week. “We feel this is going to be a tremendous return on our investment,” he said, explaining why his agency contributed $350,000 to the $4.25 million financial-incentives package improvised by state and local government to convince “Bluff City Law” producers that it would make financial as well as aesthetic sense to film in Memphis.
Indeed, for Memphis, the show was more or less an entirely positive experience, on both sides of the camera. Some young crew members were able to work in purposeful jobs on a highly professional set with actors both venerable (Jayne Atkinson) and novice (Icelandic rapper Stony Blyden), while the variety of plotlines and locations demonstrated that the Memphis area can handle a wide range of story requirements. Not just good citizens on camera, many of the actors supported Memphis businesses and causes and used their celebrity to benefit such institutions as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Indie Memphis.
Unfortunately, the rest of the country became only mildly interested, and the show consistently earned mediocre ratings. Smits has been a fixture in several long-running series, including “L.A. Law” and “NYPD Blue,” but his star presence was not enough to lure viewers to the Bluff City.
Even in Memphis, during the show’s network run, from Sept. 23 to Nov. 25, people discussed “Bluff City Law” (with me, at least) more in terms of what it might mean for Memphis or in how it presented Memphis than in terms of entertainment or emotional connection. The show certainly had its devoted and active fans, but most Memphians seemed to watch it dutifully rather than enthusiastically.
Perhaps the best way to remember
“Bluff City Law” is as a noble but failed experiment.
On the one hand, one could argue that the show — with its progressive politics, its commitment to ethnic and sexual-identity diversity, and its Greta Thunberg-worthy activist mantra of a mission statement (”Change the World!”) — was slightly ahead of its time, in terms of network drama. If “Bluff City Law” were still in production, it’s almost a certainty the writers would be figuring out ways to have the attorneys of Strait & Associates become involved in police brutality cases, Black Lives Matter protests, and accusations of racism involving trendy Memphis restaurants, just as past episodes plunked the lawyers into scenarios involving climate change, college sports corruption and environmental racism.
On the other hand, the series’ formula, in which the most complicated constitutional challenges were resolved in 42 minutes, seemed somewhat absurd. It’s easier to accept that Perry Mason could solve a murder in an hour of television than that Elijah Strait could outsmart the U.S. military, a deep-pocketed chemical company or the Roman Catholic Church in the same amount of time. Any single episode of “Bluff City Law” easily could have inspired a multi-chapter limited series on a cable network, so maybe the show would have found more success if it had dived deep into a single timely issue rather than skipping like a stone over the surfaces of enough causes to bridge the Mississippi.
In any event, the “Bluff City Law” experience may yet pay unforeseen dividends for Memphis. On June 15, Lynn Sternberger, a writer and story editor on the series, posted a tweet that might have been directed as much to the film and television industry as to her coworkers:
“Forever grateful for my time on @Nbcbluffcitylaw. Memphis is such a beautiful city and our cast & crew was stacked with talented, generous souls. Set more stuff there! Film there! Hire them!”