Presumed Innocent

The performances are uniformly good and involving but never quite enough to overcome the slick soullessness that is the hallmark of every Kelley production. You never quite care. It never quite means anything.

Presumed Innocent does have its moments, but in terms of making a case for committing to sit through eight chapters, Kelley, Gyllenhaal and company haven’t exactly put together an open-and-shut case.

Tonally, the thriller from Kelley’s back catalogue that Presumed Innocent has most in common with is The Undoing, in which Hugh Grant, as a top Manhattan doctor married to Nicole Kidman, turns out to have horridly murdered his beautiful girlfriend. The gloss can’t quite conceal the hollows.

All in all, Presumed Innocent is a somewhat unremarkable series, bolstered by its remarkable performances. It's an acting masterclass, with a strong central premise that has simply been stretched too thin.

David E. Kelley's indulgent adaptation plods over eight episodes. [24 Jun - 14 Jul 2024]

Presumed Innocent is so defined by its climactic twist that Kelley has to find more zigging and zagging to stretch things over eight hours, however briskly directors Anne Sewitsky and Greg Yaitanes move the proceedings along. Certainly the story hasn’t been expanded or enhanced with contemporary resonance.

There’s a version of “Presumed Innocent” that reaches for the humanity of its characters more, but Kelley is so intent on the soap opera courtroom dynamics that he can’t be bothered to do that, at least not at the office. The show handles its characters better outside of the legal arena.

The TV remake of “Presumed Innocent” (officially an update of Scott Turow’s 1987 novel) makes some desperate gambits to fill out its episodes, and the emptiness underneath its dedicated performances proves just as nagging as the monotonous repetition of the same two queries, hour after hour, all the way through the finale (which was not screened for critics).

Gyllenhaal isn’t exactly stretched as the ambiguous (egotistic, deceitful) Rusty, but he and Sarsgaard are the only reasons to watch.

Jake Gyllenhaal dishonors Ford with a perplexingly flat performance as Rusty; Ruth Negga makes the best of the underwritten role of his mysteriously loyal wife, Barbara; and Peter Sarsgaard has fun playing Rusty’s scheming nemesis, Tommy Molto. .... Presumed Innocent stretches a story that worked perfectly as two-hour movie to three times that length, rendering it all but inert.

Anyone with even vague memories of the film will grow impatient, while viewers new to the material will likely wonder how so much talent resulted in such a middling show.

What's clear is that the streamer was shooting for something like Sky's The Night Of, a brooding 2016 thriller set in the New York justice system. But Presumed Innocent fails to be anything like it – nowhere near as shocking, sexy or satisfying. With this much investment and this much talent, such a misfire feels almost criminal.