L&O Trial By Jury...any good? (1 Viewer)

[Sean Aaron]

I've just received a mail from Universal Home Video telling me L&O: Trial by Jury, the Complete Series is coming to DVD 25/04. Now, I didn't realise the show had been canned so quickly (13 eps. with a bonus unaired one in the set), so I have to ask: is the show crap? Why did it get canned?

I'm a collector of the other three series (still waiting for an R1 announcement for series 2 of Criminal Intent as the price for the May release R2 is a bit steep at £33) and enjoy them quite a bit, but I'm wary of a blind buy on an entire tv show.

Opinions welcome.

Cheers,

Sean

 

[Jason Seaver]

It's good. It got cancelled in part because of internal politics at NBC - they felt that they had too much Law & Order on the schedule, and that the market for procedural shows was at saturation point.

Also, it's got the last couple appearances of Jerry Orbach as Lenny Briscoe, and crossovers with the other series, which fans would proably want even if the rest of the show wasn't pretty good on its own.

 

[Sean Aaron]

Cool, I'll probably pick it up then.

 

[Mike*SC]

I thought it was a pretty weak show. The idea from the outset was clearly to show the whole jury system as incredibly cynical, which became quite obvious quite quickly (I have no political issue with this take, mind you, but it was dramatically dull). Bebe Neuwirth's character lacked the moral indignation of, say, a Jack McCoy -- it just seemed to be all about her job, again a valid choice but an unengaging one. Amy Carlson, as another A.D.A., brought nothing to her role at all. Pretty quickly, the creators seemed to lose faith in their premise, or just ran out of ideas, because the D.A.s suddenly started to do a lot of detective work.

If you're buying this to see Jerry Orbach's last couple of appearances as Det. Lenny Briscoe, you should also know that he is very visibly ill, clearly wearing a wig and a lot of make-up, and his voice is quite weak.

Is the show terrible? I guess not. Clearly, I watched several episodes, so I can't claim I hated it. But I was not surprised to see it get the axe.

 

[DavidBC]

I like it. They should have kept it going. It could have got very interesting. It had a great cast, good guest stars (Angela Lansbury being evil again is always a treat!), and should have been given a better chance