Harry's Law

Kelley's trademark whimsy feels awfully forced at this point, and Bates comes across as stiff and depressed (although that could have to do with her injuries).

What the show lacks in originality it makes up for in crisp, politically tinged dialogue.

Harry's Law is lighthearted sanctimony.

Kathy Bates is just the person to deliver David E. Kelley's tart dialogue, and he surrounds her with enough quirky characters to make this Cincinnati-set spiritual companion to "Boston Legal" a breezy diversion.

Odd, but not off-putting.

For all its flaws, there's something attractively amiable about Harry's Law. A little more grit, a little less speechifying, and a better verdict might yet arrive.

Since we like scrappy underdogs, and Bates has the skill to slide from exasperation to amusement to determination, she just might coax this hybrid into the race.

When the balance is off, as it is too frequently in Harry's Law, it undermines credibility. Bates is almost capable of making us overlook some of the show's problems.

Bates, who remains a recurring guest on the network's "The Office," brings heart and intelligence to a role that is not nearly so well-defined on the page, proof that casting can elevate any vehicle.

The pilot's accumulation of cute - oh, for the straightforward simplicity of bowling alley lawyer "Ed" - feels overbearing long before Kelley's courtroom summation turns societal sermon.

Her character, a hard-drinking, pistol-packing liberal with a lot to say about how the legal system is stacked against the average guy, is as outsized a figure as you'd expect, but Bates manages to ground her in reality. But she's surrounded by thinner-than-thin supporting characters: loopy coworkers, arrogant legal adversaries and clients who are the kind of caricatures of Troubled Urban Street Youth that, I guess, are supposed to not be offensive as long as your legal drama is taking their side.

It's a lead performance that's completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the show, and one that makes all the other goofy things even more uncomfortable than usual.

Fans who've stuck with Kelley ("L.A. Law," "Ally McBeal") as his series became more outlandish (and yet repetitive) might enjoy seeing Bates in those inevitable scenes where she sways the court with the power of the writer's convictions. But there's a disconnect between Kelley's whimsy and his rhetoric here that too often leaves the cranky Harriet looking merely foolish.

The show seems aware of the questions raised by this narrative dynamic, but hasn't sorted out a way to do more than note them.

Unfortunately, neither Bates nor Kelley seems to have any heart in this show. Picking up pretty much where he left off with "Boston Legal," Kelley turns the courtroom into Air America.

It's all cheap, easy, predictable and not very clever.

The show's pea-brain sociology is eclipsed only by its Dadaesque conception of courtroom drama.

Kathy Bates' surly gravity can't prevail over the silliness of this new series. [24 Jan 2010, p.43]

A show that feels like it's multiple terrible shows in one. It's like he pitched four bad ideas to NBC, and the network decided to pour them all into one hour.