Television Legal Dramas
There have been successful legal dramas both serious and comedic. Notable examples of serious legal dramas that deal with the difficulties and the dark side of the law are The Practice and Law & Order. These shows often deal with the morals of dealing with people such as murderers, rapists, con artists, amoral lawyers, insane people, etc. and the difficulty of defending innocents found in situations where spectators and the public find the person to be dishonorable and cruel but in actuality were innocent people who were in the wrong situation at the wrong time. While there are comedic legal dramas that usually deal less with murder cases and more on cases that deal with issues such as divorce, sex, cheating and accidents portrayed in a comedic fashion. Notable examples of this type of legal drama are Ally McBeal and Boston Legal.
There are rarely any legal dramas on television that don't focus on the battle between two opposing sides through litigation. In reality, more often than not, most lawsuits are resolved through a settlement before ever going to court; shows like Damages, Suits and occasionally The Good Wife, do attempt to portray this.
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Famous quotes containing the words television and/or legal:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)