If I ran the network, part 7

If you've seen the 1982 version of I, the Jury, starring Armand Assante as Mike Hammer, you probably remember the scene in the restaurant where Hammer grabs a man trying to kill him and slams the man's face onto a sizzling hot grill, replete with the sound of searing flesh and the pained cries of the would-be killer.

If you've seen the 1955 movie Kiss Me Deadly, starring Ralph Meeker as Hammer, you probably remember several scenes in which Hammer more or less beats the hell out of an assortment of bad guys, slamming on of them into a wall before throwing him down a flight of stairs.

If you've read any of Mickey Spillane's Hammer books, you'll know that these scenes are pretty faithful to the tone of the books, but, if anything, they're a little toned-down from what Hammer does on the printed page. You'll also know that Hammer has no compunction about killing, especially when it's done in a righteous cause.

If you've seen any one of the several versions of Mike Hammer that have appeared on television over the years, especially the ones with Darren McGavin and Stacy Keach, you probably know that, while both of them play Hammer as a pretty tough dude, neither of them comes close to capturing the essential violence of the man: quick, primal, explosive, and relentless. Hammer may not kill every bad guy he encounters, but he seldom ever leaves them standing.

One of the problems I've had with Hammer on television—and I particularly liked Stacy Keach in the role—is that the action seldom ever reaches the potential carried within the character. Back in 1984, when Keach first started playing Hammer, it would have been highly unlikely to see a scene similar to the restaurant brawl I mentioned earlier. It would have been unthinkable to allow Hammer to essentially kill someone in cold blood, even if they had it coming. (It would also have been unthinkable to show the sex scenes that littered I, the Jury, but that's a question for another day.)

Television has changed a great deal since then, and while I don't think these changes have, for the most part, been for the best, in the case of a Mike Hammer revival—which is what I'm pitching here—it can only be a plus. You see, Mike Hammer without that extreme level of violence is not Mike Hammer. At best, he'd be a slightly more violent version of Joe Mannix. 

There's a visceral thrill involved in reading a Hammer novel, and I've read most of them. Spillane crafted his villains well, and while you might or might not agree with Spillane's basic contention that it's better to kill a vicious criminal than risk having him set free by a lenient court system, there's something profoundly satisfying about it when it happens. And because television has always softened Hammer (not only his violent nature, but his rough edges as well), it's always failed to capture the essence of the man. 

And so my concept for "The Real Mike Hammer" (working title, obviously), is to give us the Hammer we deserve, the Hammer of the books, the Hammer that stands apart from other private detectives. There's no reason why we can't have that Hammer, at least on prestige streaming; I can't really think of many scenes from the books that couldn't be done on television nowadays, at least in some form. 

The trick, of course, is in finding someone to play this half-man, half-animal, a tough, morally ambiguous detective fueled by rage and patriotism. I'm so far out of touch with so many of today's stars that I don't know where I'd begin to cast Hammer; I've been told that Jon Bernthal and Ryan Hurst would be two good choices, and frankly I'm in no position to disagree. (Besides, it's much more fun to speculate on who'd play Velda.) 

Whoever it is, though, I think it's time to break out of the cookie-cutter mold that marks private detective series, either past or present, and return the genre to its pulp roots. And for me, that means going back to the future, with the real Mike Hammer. TV  

If I ran the network, part 6

When the idea first came into my head, there weren't a lot of series about serial-killers on television. (That there's even such a genre says something about our society, I think, but we'll save that for another day.) I was sure, however, that there was a place for the idea, if it were done correctly, in a manner that would confound those thinking they were getting something more conventional, more in line with what they were used to seeing.

Thus was born "Jack the Ripper: The Series." 

That wouldn't have been the final title, of course. For one thing, I wasn't interested in doing a period piece, at least not that period. I also wasn't interested in a series set in England. And anyway, what more is there to say about the real Jack the Ripper that hasn' t already been said? I mean, if the idea that the Ripper might have been a member of the royal family doesn't shock you, then what's the use? It made for a good working title, though, and as far as explaining the concept goes, it'd be a great elevator pitch. So it stays as a place-holder.

In rejecting a period piece, I also rejected setting it in a contemporary timeframe, when so much of modern investigative and forensic work is conducted in the lab, online, or through psychological profiling. No, what I wanted to see was good, old-fashioned police work, where pavements are pounded and shoe leather is worn out, where informants are consulted and every lead has to be followed up. As for the location, probably a nameless American city with a population of several million people, as opposed to a small town where the character pool would be relatively limited and the focus of the investigation would narrow rapidly. Both of these were details to be determined later.

The series would work something like this: in the pilot (a two-hour special), we'd meet three or four characters, people from various walks of life. We'd learn about them: what they did, what their lives were like, what they did at home and on the job, and how those factors might possibly bring them within the circle of a serial killer. At first, as each one is murdered, the crimes are investigated as unrelated killings, but by the end of the pilot, the police realize they're dealing with a serial killer. For however many epsodes the series runs, we'd see the investigation progress, through the eyes of the task force formed to coordinate the strategy, the detectives looking for clues, the reporters covering the story, or some other aspect of the case. 

In the meantime, the killings continue, usually at the rate of one per episode, but never more than two. Each week we'd be introduced to two or three potential Ripper victims. As in the pilot, they'd be the focus of the episode, similar to character-driven dramas like The Untouchables, Naked City and The FBI. Sometimes their activities would be shown simultaneously on split-screens (a la 24), other times we'd switch between their stories and the progress of the investigation. Throughout the episode, viewers would be left wondering what threat might be waiting around the corner, at a dark bus stop, or in the shadows next to the garage. 

As for the identity of the Ripper, it could be male or female, one person or two—we wouldn't know until the final episode, although sharp-eyed viewers would pick up clues after every murder that would allow them to play along with the detectives in creating a profile that would suggest various suspects. Along the way there will be false leads, red herrings, and brick walls encountered. It could be that one of the guest stars, one we feared might be a victim, becomes a suspect instead. It could be the delivery person who brings coffee or donuts to the detectives, one of the reporters, or even one of the detectives. We might receive glimpses of the killer in various episodes without realizing it, and we might have some parts of the story seen through the eyes of the killer, without revealing their identity. 

As the murders continue, the detectives would begin to establish a pattern, that would produce a list of suspects; that list would be added to or narrowed down over the course of the series. Some suspects might reappear in multiple episodes, while others come and go in the course of an hour. There could be cliffhanger endings in which the detectives pursue a suspect who eludes them; that suspect might be cleared later, or remain on the list. In one of those episodes where we see things through the eyes of the killer, we might see him come close to being captured, have the intended victim escape, or have the plan inadvertently thwarted, with the intended never knowing how close he or she came to becoming a statistic.

There'd also be room for some episodes that break the mold. For instance, there might be an episode in which, with the killer not having struck for several months, the case appears to be on the verge of going cold. There could be a story in which a psychic is brought in to try and identify who might be behind the crimes. We could see a reporter working on a trap that would catch the killer; and there'd probably be one illustrating the pressure mounting on the department to capture the Ripper, with that pressure being passed down to the detectives. Speaking of which, since in real life these crimes often take place over extended periods of time, we'll probably see three or four years pass over the course of the series, during which time new detectives come on the case while others are transferred, get killed on the job, retire, or otherwise move on.

Admittedly, there are some ideas that have to be worked out before we can go into production. For one thing, we'd have to give the viewers characters they can care about, to keep them tuning in each week; therefore, the potential victims have to be compelling, fully-formed charcters, with viewers becoming invested in their stories (some of them might be real SOBs, people you'd want to be victims). And there'd have to be characters among the detectives that would be the main protagonists, people the viewers would be rooting for. Unlike The Killer, under no circumstances would the Ripper ever be considered the protagonist, even if he did wind up killing someone who deserved it.

To be sure, "Jack the Ripper: The Series" is a long way from being a polished idea, although that never stopped a network from greelighting a series. There are some things about it that I really liked, though: the way it combined serial storytelling, with the arc continuing through the whole series, and episodic television, with a new victim being killed each week. And while we've seen serial killers come and go on TV in the years since, I don't know how many Rippers have carried that series without being the lead character—or, for that matter, without even being identified. And how many series have carried such a serial killer investigation through an entire season, with the killings continuing each week?

It might not be an idea a network would pick up today, but there would always be a place for it on HBC. No matter what it was called. TV  

If I ran the network, part 5

Earlier this year, I introduced a new feature, "If I Ran the Network," a series of TV concepts that would never have made it to the small screen without network executives screwing them up. If you have similar ideas, please share them in the comments section; if I get enough, I'll use them to put together a complete prime-time lineup for the fictional HBC Network!

One of the games we play, you and I, is to recast our favorite movies and TV shows of the past, using the stars of today. You see it on social media all the time: "If you were remaking [fill in the blank] today, who would you cast as [star]? We all do it, I think. Studios do it too, albeit with much higher stakes, and it doesn't often work. 

One of the risks involved in resurrecting a classic show of the past is to decide whether it wants to be a resurrection, keeping the new version as close to the original as possible; or a reboot, in which case everything—time, place, technology—is brought up to date, with varying degress of success. For example, the new verison of Frasier is, I would suggest, a resurrection, while the new Matlock is a reboot. And while it's important, if you're considering such a move, to choose correctly—resurrection or reboot—it's perhaps even more important, once you've made your choice, to stick to it. Don't backtrack, don't fudge, don't change your mind in the middle of the process.

When What's My Line? finished its original run in 1967, it wasn't but a year before the show came back in a five-days-a-week syndicated version, but make no mistake: even though the basics of the game remained the same, this was no resurrection; it was a reboot, pure and simple. Gone was the formality of the past; instead of panelists dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns and addressed as "Mr." or "Miss," we were now on a first-name basis with the celebrities, who now dressed in a much more casual manner. Instead of the urbanity (and verbosity) of John Charles Daly, the program was now hosted by  actor and veteran game show host Larry Blyden (after one year in which the host was jouranlist Wally Bruner). Gone were the wit and humor of panelists like Bennett Cerf; instead we got the much broader comedy of Soupy Sales and Nipsey Russell. Contestants no longer came on the show only to stump the panel; on occasion they would also demonstrate their line, if it was an entertaining one. As I say, a reboot rather than a resurrection.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you; Soupy and Nipsey were funny guys, and Arlene Francis was still on the panel. The syndicated version had a pretty successful run. It's just that it's missing what made What's My Line? one of my favorite programs in the first place, and it's not what I had in mind when I pondered what a new version would look like. 

First things first: nobody can replace John Charles Daly. I've said it before, and I'll say it again now: John Daly is who I want to be when I grow up. But a show has to have a host, and I always felt that one person who might have been able to pull it off, who could approximate a modicum of the urbanity and formality of the original, while maintaining control over the panel, was James Lipton. He was terrific on Inside the Actors Studio, he was smart and experienced when it came to television, and he was self-effacing enough to laugh at lampoons of his own propensity for pomposity. 

Just as John Daly had Bennett Cerf for a foil, James Lipton would need one as well, and who better to serve in the role than Charles Grodin? If he was half as effective as he was as a guest with Johnny Carson, he'd have been perfect; I also suspect that, like Cerf, he would have been very good at the game. The two women on the panel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Robin Roberts, win their way on the panel through a combination of smarts and quick thinking; I think they both would have been very good while maintaining the sense of formality that I was looking for. And rounding out the panel, we have Neil Patrick Harris, who strikes me as someone who'd actually enjoy being on WML. There's our regular cast of characters, with plenty of room for occasional guest panelists.

Of course, neither James Lipton nor Charles Grodin are with us today, so my concept would require some retooling. Speaking of Frasier as we were, though, I could see Kelsey Grammer taking the place of either one of them; let's make him the host, though, since Frasier Crane wouldn't have settled for being a mere panelist. In place of Grodin: Anderson Cooper, perhaps? Jon Stewart? Dennis Miller? Piers Morgan, for an international flavor? 

Naturally, the network would never go for it. They'd want a panel made up entirely of stand-up comedians doing their routines, just fitting in a question here and there. Same for the mystery guest. No, I'm very much afraid that today's WML would be loud, crude, political, woke.  And forget the formal wear and means of address; nobody talks or dresses like that nowadays. 

The problem with a resurrection of What's My Line? is that it would be clever, witty, sophisticated, literate, and genteel. In other words, everything we aren't today. TV  

If I ran the network, part 4

Recently I kicked off a new feature, "If I Ran the Network," a series of TV concepts that would never have made it to the small screen without network executives screwing them up. If you have similar ideas, please share them in the comments section; if I get enough, I'll use them to put together a complete prime-time lineup for the fictional HBC Network!

As ABC and CBS eventually discovered, a network has to have a late-night talk show in its lineup in order to achieve some level of credibility; the Fox network even kicked off its programming with one, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, a full six months before its primetime lineup debuted. The sad fact is that many of these shows were failures, in terms of ratings if not quality, and the even sadder fact is that we would be infinitely better off if we had old movies running in place of the "talk" shows that exist in late-night today. 

I don't say this because of any particular political content (note that, Guardian), but because today's shows have completely lost the art of conversation; there isn’t much talking, guests don’t stick around to engage in banter, and an hour isn’t much time to get a good conversation in anyway. Let’s face it; today’s shows are mostly for actors and singers to talk about their latest movies or albums, and for comedians to tell a few jokes. Everything’s been pre-screened, and the host isn’t much more than a glorified press agent setting the guests up for whatever it is they want to plug. Such has always been the case, to a point, but Carson and Paar and Cavett knew how to interview someone, rather than simply feed them lines. Perhaps more important, they knew how to listen.

So in developing the station's flagship late-night show, I had several criteria to keep in mind. First, the running time needed to be restored to the traditional 90 minutes; second, guests should be encouraged to remain for the entire show, taking part in the conversation; third, the show had to have a host that could carry the load—glib, knowledgeable, a good listener as well as talker, with the ability to not only interview guests but keep the conversation going, and able to handle serious interviews as well as light ones. A sardonic sense of humor was definitely a plus. That's not asking too much, is it?

Thus was the genesis of The Bobby Rivers Show. I enjoyed him on his VH-1 program Watch Bobby Rivers, and thought he'd be perfect for the kind of program I had in mind. Like Cavett, he had the ability to ask incisive questions; like Carson, he knew how to play off of his guests; like Paar, he knew the show would only be as good as the guests made it. He could puncture pomposity without being cruel, and didn't take himself too seriously. And he knew everyone. I thought that with a format similar to that used by, say, Graham Norton—no desk, guests sitting around in a way conducive to conversation—and a Tonight Show-style house band led by a Quincy Jones protégé, we'd have a hit on our hands. I'd kind of filed the idea away, but was reminded of it when he died last year, and I still think it would have been a terrific show.

After that, viewers need something to wind down, and to provide a contrast to Bobby Rivers, I propose a one-hour show called Q&A. Similar to the original format of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow, this would have been a one-on-one interview, appropriate to a 1:00 a.m. hour: no studio audience, no musical guests, and no set—just a black backdrop, illuminating only the host and the guest. And here's the twist: except for the introduction at the beginning of the show and the transitions going into and coming out of the commercial break, the camera would remain focused only on the guest. No reaction shots of the host, no mugging for the viewers. You might see that guest from two or three different angles; it wouldn't be a static shot, as if you were watching a security camera. But this would be all about the guest.

Obviously you'd need a special kind of host for a program like this, and I never did come up with someone I thought would really work, which is why Q&A probably would never have seen the light of day. (Airing at one in the morning, it wouldn't have seen the light anyway, but you know what I mean.) The obvious contemporary choice would have been someone like Charlie Rose, or Brian Lamb from C-SPAN's Booknotes. James Lipton might have been a good choice, but I don't think he could have been satisfied with not being seen on camera, and I've got other plans for him anyway. 

The problems with a late-night lineup like this should be obvious to you. Too boring, the network suits would have said. Nobody wants to think just before they go to sleep—they want personalities. In other words, these shows would have been too smart for viewers. And maybe they're right, but I don't think so. Late-night programs nowadays have a very narrow, niche audience; they're not mainstream, and they don't try to be. It's unfortunate, and that's why I think there would be an audience for them. We'd have to get someone other than Bobby Rivers, unfortunately; maybe we can check and see what Graham Norton is doing. TV  

If I ran the network, part 3

Recently I kicked off a new feature, "If I Ran the Network," a series of TV concepts that would never have made it to the small screen without network executives screwing them up. If you have similar ideas, please share them in the comments section; if I get enough, I'll use them to put together a complete prime-time lineup for the fictional HBC Network!

The idea for The Phil Collins Show was born from the success of The Tracey Ullman Show, which ran on Fox for four seasons from 1987 to 1990, and is now primarily known for having introduced The Simpsons. The Ullman show was a brilliant concept, combining sketch comedy, musical acts, and cartoon shorts, such as the Simpsons feature. In order to make this kind of concept work, you need one of two things: Dean Martin, or an exceptionally talented host. While Deano wasn't available, the fantastically talented Tracey Ullman was, and the show became the biggest success to date on the fledgling Fox network.

Phil Collins seemed like a good choice to host this kind of variety show. He was at the tail end of the greatest years of his career; his group, Genesis, was a bland shadow of its former self, having transitioned from progressive rock to pop, and Collins was sounding more and more like a white Lionel Richie*; it seemed to me that it would have been a good time to transition into television.  

*No offense to Richie here; I use that example specifically because Phil Collins once said, in a Playboy interview, that he didn't want to wind up sounding "like a white Lionel Richie." Of course, I only read the interview.

The show's format would have been similar to that of Ullman's, a half-hour program which would include Phil singing his latest hit, a performance by a musical or comedy guest (the show would probably be shot in London, meaning many of the guests would have been British), a sketch involving said guest star (with Phil playing a fictionalized version of himself, not unlike the premise of The Jack Benny Program), and a duet featuring Phil and his guest. Its casual attitude would have been reminiscent of The Dean Martin Show, and while I don't suggest that it would have been as successful, I think it could have built a solid audience.

One of the things which I would have hoped would attract viewers would have been the idea of guests that one didn't usually see on television, performing comedy routines that they might or might not have been totally suited for. Imagine, for example, Phil and Pete Townshend doing a version of the Dead Parrot Sketch from Monty Python. My favorite episode idea, though, was this one:

Frankly, I think Collins could have extended his career by years with this show. It's not as if he couldn't have pulled it off; he was a child actor, so he shouldn't have had any problems with the comedy, and he certainly had enough hits to carry the show. And with the half-hour format, the series could easily have been done in-between various tours, whether solo or with Genesis. Network executives probably would have been worried about all the foreign accents on the show, though, not to mention that Phil hardly looked like the star of his own variety series. You can't talk me out of the idea, though.

A network does not live by drama alone, and with the heavy shows I introduced in the first two segments of this feature, I think it was important to introduce something lighter, while remaining creative. I wonder what's next on the schedule? TV   

If I ran the network, part 2

Recently I kicked off a new feature, "If I Ran the Network," a series of TV concepts that would never have made it to the small screen without network executives screwing them up. If you have similar ideas, please share them in the comments section; if I get enough, I'll use them to put together a complete prime-time lineup for the fictional HBC Network!

I've mentioned this idea before, although not under the name: Scales of Justice.* It's not an original concept as much as it is a refinement on an existing one, but it appeals to my core belief that good television ought to stimulate conversation, to give you insights you might not have had before, to make you think about what you saw and speculate about what might have happened after the episode ended.

*Since this series is based on the premise that you couldn't get it past meddling network executives, it's worth mentioning that the first thing a VP of Programming would do is insist that the protagonist be a Justice Department maverick named Jack Scales. The title sequence each week would include him introducing himself as Scales of Justice. Get it?

Scales of Justice most closely follows Law and Order, in that each episode consists of two parts: the crime and subsequent investigation, and the trial. It's a whodunnit, in the sense that we don't actually see the crime committed; instead, we experience the aftereffects of said crime. In other words, we do not know for sure that the person arrested and put on trial is, in fact, the guilty party.

So far, so good. (I hope.) But where Law and Order suggests that the authority figures (the police and the lawyers in the DA's office) are the protagonists, there is no such guarantee in Scales of Justice. Think of it more as a version of The Wire, or a similar gritty police show, where the authorities are, in the best of circumstances, antiheroes. Sometimes, it will turn out that the police arrested the wrong person. Sometimes, during the course of the investigation, the detectives will make a fatal error, either by questioning the suspect without legal counsel or by discovering evidence without following the proper constitutional procedure, which winds up with the judge throwing the evidence out. Sometimes it will simply be a case where the police focus on one suspect early on, to the exclusion of others, and stop looking for evidence that might be inconvenient to their case. (A favorite accusation that Perry Mason makes against Burger, Tragg, et. al.) You'll like some of these characters more often than you do others, but you'll neither like nor dislike any of them all of the time.

Speaking of Perry Mason, another element I wanted to introduce in Scales of Justice is a defense attorney who becomes a semi-regular, appearing a few times each season (depending on how many episodes we have). For this character, think of someone like Gerry Spence—an attorney who has never lost a criminal case. One of the aspects of Perry Mason that I never thought held water was the idea that Burger was always complaining about Mason's "courtroom theatrics," even though those theatrics had helped clear his client and identify the real killer every single week. You'd think that Burger, having lost to Mason every time they go head-to-head, would start to worry about his case one he found out Perry would be defending the accused. I suspect he'd demand that the homicide detectives double-, triple-, and even quadruple-check everything before he even sought an indictment. (Of course, that's the way it should be anyway, but we'll let it pass for the time being.)

And that's the reason why I wanted to introduce this Mason-like defense attorney. By the time he appears in the first-season finale, the audience is conditioned to know that his client, the accused, is innocent. My intent was that viewers would then start thinking about what they'd seen in the first half of the episode; since we know the accused didn't do it, that means that somewhere along the line, either the police or the DA's office took the wrong fork in the road. What was it? Where did they go wrong? And not only did I want viewers to start thinking this way, I wanted those in charge to have those same thoughts. We must have made a mistake. Where did we go wrong? I've written plenty about how much I dislike many of today's procedurals; what I wanted to accomplish with Scales of Justice, more than anything else, was to knock the ego-driven, cocksure investigators—think Stabler or Gibbs or whatever your favorite procedural might be—off their perch. 

I also wanted these mistakes to have consequences; perhaps one of the detectives is suspended for a few episodes because he's violated the accused's constitutional rights one time too many. Maybe one of the assistant DAs gets sacked because of poor case preparation. But that's not to say that they won't get their rewards for doing a good job; we might see a detective get a promotion, or one of the DAs start appearing more often. At any rate, it's a great threat to hold over the head of cast members: you can be replaced at any time!

Some of you will see the obvious parallels to the 1963 drama Arrest and Trial, in which Ben Gazzara played the college-educated detective who makes the arrest, while Chuck Connors is the defense attorney who tries to get the accused acquitted. We're watching the show right now, and it's pretty good, with fine performances and some very thought-provoking situations. The problem with the concept, however, was that by definition it meant that each week, one of the two protagonists would be proved wrong. 

The producers, I thought, tried some clever ideas to get around this; for instance, Gazzara, being college-educated, is far more inclined than most detectives of the time to consider the environment from which the perp came, as well as other mitigating circumstances. Sometimes, although the evidence forces him to make the arrest, he simply doesn't believe that the suspect is guilty—he has to follow the evidence (as you would on CSI), but his gut tells him that there's more to the story than what the evidence says. 

Likewise, Connors sometimes finds out that his client is actually guilty, and manages to convince them to change their plea. More often, though, we'll see that his ultimate goal is to take advantage of those mitigating circumstances to save his client from a harsher punishment—life in prison, for example, rather than the death penalty. He's constantly working the jury (it's a pleasure to watch him do so), trying to get them to understand that, even though his client may have killed someone, he's not a "murderer." Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Despite this, it doesn't quite work, and this is something I wanted to avoid with Scales of Justice. That's why it's important that viewers didn't always like the usual "good guys," or why getting someone off on a technicality might actually be a good thing (if you're ever accused of a crime, you can bet you'd want an attorney committed to giving you the best defense possible). That can be a hard sell, although I think it's more plausible now that antiheroes are more acceptable on television. (Same with The Killer; I wonder if this says something about me?) But if you're worried that audiences want to identify with a protagonist each week, then make it an anthology. I know, I know, anthologies don't work anymore, unless you're doing a six- or eight-episode season, after which you introduce a new cast. But this way each week would truly leave you wondering which way the case would go. I don't like that idea as well as the original, but at least it shows that I'm willing to deal in good faith.

At any rate, it would never be very likely that a series like Scales of Justice would find a place on a fall schedule. As I said, people want to root for the regulars every week. They wouldn't like seeing their favorites from Dick Wolf's stable of shows get spanked for screwing up, or just being a bad human being. Most of all, I don't think they'd like the ambiguity of the whole concept, the idea that policemen can make mistakes (even though they can), that innocent people get put on trial (even though they do), that sometimes we might not even know if the jury came in with the right verdict (even though we can't always be positive). Hence, the title Scales of Justice: sometimes the blindfolded lady's scales tip one way, sometimes the other. In other words, it would look too much like real life to have a chance on television.

I could be wrong, though. People have always liked series featuring defense attorneys: think Perry Mason or Matlock. And we know people like police procedurals. Suppose we combined the two, like peanut butter and chocolate? It could work. Couldn't it? TV