Goliath

What’s there so far is damn entertaining TV, but steady updates in the upcoming episodes could make Goliath truly mighty.

This is all one big story, but each episode builds to an interesting climax that drives the story forward, and there's not the usual sag you get with a lot of the serialized Amazon and Netflix dramas.

After a strong pilot episode, Goliath felt like it was starting to find its rhythm in episode two. The series moved to the courtroom and McBride's legal acumen was on full display. It was impressive albeit familiar ground.

The show has the kind of jaunty professionalism of a John Grisham novel, in which an outmatched lawyer takes on a, yes, goliath, and usually wins at great personal expense.

Bolstered by as A-list a cast as anything on TV (with the exception of “Westworld” perhaps) and tighter, less showy writing than we’ve come to expect from Kelley, Goliath cruises through boardrooms of billion-dollar law firms and seedy bars populated with lowlifes with equal amounts of confidence.

Unlike many streaming dramas, each episode of Goliath has a satisfying internal structure, and the series exudes a notable sense of forward movement. This allows the stellar cast to wring evocative moments of intensity, pathos, and sly humor from the solid spine constructed by Kelley and his writers.

The show nonetheless sails along thanks to a full tank of Billy Bob. [14 Oct 2016, p.52]

Kelley and Shapiro are a little too in love with their quirks to create a show that doesn’t occasionally tip over into unearned melodrama and/or Gothic horror, and the series’ understanding of lesbian relationships, in particular, is straight out of 1992. But at its core, where it counts, Goliath does more good than bad.

Thornton is sensational as the shattered Billy McBride, a one-time star litigator who took the ruins of his life and crawled into a whiskey bottle. When he's not on screen, you grow impatient for his return.

Goliath has plenty of moments where it verges on predictably prolonged melodrama, but it also has scenes that gracefully elevate the courtroom-suspense genre.

It’s a solidly entertaining legal thriller that benefits enormously from Billy Bob Thornton’s strong lead.

There’s nothing radical or particularly groundbreaking about it. If anything, it is conventional in an almost self-conscious way. ... But what truly elevates Goliath are the performances by Thornton and Arianda.

What keeps Goliath watchable, and it's certainly quite watchable, is the superlative ensemble cast, particularly Billy Bob Thornton, whose gift at taking predictably quirky characters and making the beats of that quirkiness slightly off-kilter is close to unmatched.

A lethargic procedural is brightened by a good cast.

In truth, the whole cast helps to elevate overly clever dialogue.

With the exception of some added F-bombs, Goliath plays like a reasonably decent prime-time legal mystery circa 1998, not a modern drama revelation.

That's a lot of acting chops squeezed into one series, and Kelley is too gifted a writer not to produce some clever dialogue and twists; still, the tale of a drunken lawyer seizing this shot at redemption can't help but feel a tad stale, almost like a variation of Thornton's "The Bad News Bears" role.

A lot of the time the storytelling is needlessly pokey, dragging through situations that are too familiar from too many other series and movies, as if trying to make us think Goliath is arty and atmospheric and "character-driven." But on the other hand: behold Billy Bob Thornton.

Keep your eyes on Thornton and the shading he brings to his work--because most everything else in Goliath, the title included, is so on-the-nose it could make you cringe.

As the story unspools, the part of it in which McBride figures continues to be entertaining, in a been-there-done-that kind of way. ... But then there’s the other half of the show’s odd bordering-on-bizarre split personality. ... Suddenly we’re in an arch, slick, hyped-up TV legal show, with lawyers marching in formation and exchanging withering put-downs.

Whatever there is to enjoy about the show, it’s all surface level, and that surface is too choppy to be routinely entertaining.

Thornton seems to be playing against script. His Billy seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself, despite the dire circumstances he finds himself in. It’s about the only surprise in Goliath. By the end of the second episode, it becomes obvious there are forces in play that will stop at nothing to thwart Billy’s quest for answers.

Overcooked though it may be, Goliath (terrible title, by the way) is entertaining because Thornton knows how to effectively underplay overwritten dialogue.

Goliath, so far, never comes within spitting distance of any of those productions. It’s David E. Kelley doing variations on his earlier shows, with some very good actors trying to make it fresh.