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Primetime Show Reviews

"Conviction" Review by Suzanne 8/26/06

Conviction - The Complete Series

This is another drama by Dick Wolf, who created all of the "Law and Order" shows.  However, it did not stay on the air very long.  I'm not sure whether it deserved to be canned or not, but it certainly wasn't given much of a chance. It aired Friday nights, which is where networks usually stick shows they aren't confident about.  It aired in the spring 2006 and did not run very long (when most shows were going off the air for the year).  Someone did not think this should would do well, obviously.

It is definitely not one of the "Law and Order" franchises.  It is more like a soap opera in that it goes into the lawyer's personal lives a lot (pretty much the opposite of what L&O does).  It is about young prosecutors in the D.A.'s office in New York, but it does not have the gritty realism that the L&O shows does.  It tries to be more young and hip, but it doesn't really work.

The show's ensemble cast is fine, but perhaps having mostly unfamiliar faces worked against it.  None of them really stand out as great or unusual.  The show does avoid stereotypes, for the most part, but all that does it make it more bland.  The cases are interesting, but the show focuses more on the D.A.'s and their lives than on the cases, so you don't really get that involved in the cases. It tries to be more like "The Practice" than L&O, but Dick Wolf is clearly not as adept at blending characters with stories as David E. Kelley is.  Also, it's hard for me to pull for prosecutors because I tend to want to root for the little guy (which in this case is often the criminal).  I much preferred "In Justice", which also ran on Friday nights.

Watching the show on DVD is not a waste of time because it is a passable soap opera drama, even if it's not one you might terribly miss if you didn't watch it.  If you are a big Dick Wolf fan, you might enjoy seeing how he tried this experiment and failed.  Perhaps someday he'll try another non-Law & Order drama and it will be better than this one; this one will be the great training ground that helped the future show do better.

I really like the actor J. August Richards, who plays Billy on this show (the token black guy) because of his role in "Angel". I'm sad that he is out of a job. He was the main reason I watched this show. The show also stars Stephanie March as Alexandra Cabot, a character we all know from "Law & Order: SVU".

The DVD extras are limited to 7 character profiles of the main characters , hosted by the actors.  These are quite interesting.

Read my previous review from when the show aired.

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