Drama series fights good fight for genre
Show set in legal firm sets new standard for portraying diversity
Last year I ushered in 2018 by recapping all the trash of 2017 — and there was a lot — so that we could cleanse ourselves ahead of the new year. I was going to do the same this year, but instead I found a show so good it eclipsed the bad and somehow, made some of the more questionable content I’ve endured this year seem worth it.
It’s called The Good Fight and until last week, I’d never heard of it.
Season two of the series dropped quietly on Amazon Prime in March with zero fanfare or media hype — or at least nothing that made it to any of my newsfeeds.
Despite being a spinoff from the The Good Wife, which never interested me, my boss recommended it to me on a Thursday and by the end of the weekend, I’d binged both seasons in full and turned two of my friends on to the series, who had immediately followed suit.
Why? Because The Good Fight is, finally, the series we’ve all been waiting for.
It’s a gripping legal drama with strong, character-driven stories ripped straight from the headlines — and sometimes, headlines which hadn’t even happened when they would’ve been making it.
They take on fake news, internet trolls, sexual harassment and even Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — who is a complete and utterchild of an idiot.
But more importantly, it’s the most diverse thing I’ve seen all year and
it’s diversity done naturally, with full commitment, and without any notable missteps.
While everyone else is floundering around trying to tick checkboxes so they don’t get skewered on Twitter, The Good Fight simply showed the world as it is without stereotypes or any obvious expectation of a pat on the back.
It follows Diane Lockhart — played by the flawless Christine Baranski — as she joins an otherwise all African-American law firm which specialises in handling police brutality cases in the city of Chicago.
She takes with her a brand new associate Maia (Game of Thrones’
Rose Leslie), who also happens to be her goddaughter and whose father is caught up in a major embezzlement scandal. She also picks up a new assistant named Marissa (Sarah Steele) who is the greatest self-starter and self-cheerleader you’ve never seen on TV — not in a woman anyway.
Do I wish a programme set in an all-black firm weren’t led by three white women? Normally, I would, but here it actually works in that most of these “diverse” shows are based on people of colour having to integrate into a white world, and now it’s the opposite.
They don’t always get what’s happening and they don’t always try; they know when to step back and they know when to stand up with — not for — their colleagues.
Meanwhile, one of those women is over 60 years old and still has her career, independence and sex life.
Finally, we have a legal drama led by ambitious, powerful, self-assured women.
One has the kind of bolshy and ambitious personality women in office dramas are never allowed, demanding a job, a raise, recognition and respect while remaining true to herself. And one is openly queer, lives with her girlfriend and whose sexuality is barely remarked upon.
Plus at the firm they join Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo), who could easily have become enemies with Maia — the way stereotypical career women usually would — but instead she takes her under her wing and makes her a close friend. There’s also Liz Lawrence (Audra McDonald) who does make an enemy out of Diane — but the pair are later able to set aside their differences out of sheer mutual respect — and who fearlessly takes on the “angry black woman” stereotype more than once.
Finally, we have a legal drama — which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly a fresh genre — led by ambitious, powerful, self-assured women who support and empower each other both professionally and personally.
It’s full of not only African-American faces, but African-American stories; we get many glimpses into what life is like on a daily basis, whether it be the violence people of colour face in the streets or the misconceptions they battle in their workplaces.
And while it is very leftist and antiTrump, there is balance — a questioning of prejudices and assumptions regarding what a Trump voter looks like, what an alt-right leader looks like, what a neo-Nazi looks like, and what drives people to do the things they do.
This is a show aptly named because it fights the good fight for the rest of us. It’s insanely clever, impressively diverse and, most importantly for TV, wonderfully compelling and often unexpectedly funny.
This is easily one of my favourite shows of the year, and I hope when season three drops next year, it gets the recognition it deserves.