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Critic Reviews
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Feels like a hit show about to happen.
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Shark works some of the same ground as Fox's new legal drama Justice, but with far more wit and style.
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"Shark" is one of the season's best and fastest-moving new dramas.
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Woods is every bit as entertaining as he strives to be. [25 Sep 2006, p.43]
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Nothing about this cookie-cutter courtroom drama is really up to Woods' talent, but given his head and a lot of room, he makes it work.
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The series... is pure formula, but it's a formula that works.
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Good actors can get away with glib, and Woods is one of the best, persuasive enough to have you spotting freshness in the familiar and wisdom in cliches.
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"Shark"... is clearly a "House" imitator, but a pretty crisp copy.
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Mr. Woods has found a television role that suits his gift and runs away with it.
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"Shark" now looks like above-average, workaday TV with promise.
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The show is not as good as Woods makes it, but not as bad as some of the new shows.
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If you don't like Woods' frantic, frequent speeches, and you can't get out of the "Without a Trace" Thursday habit, best to steer clear.
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If the "Shark" writers feel the need to, in the very first episode, soften their hero in a way the "House" writers haven't had to do in two-plus seasons, how warm and fuzzy will the character be by November sweeps, let alone the end of the season?
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If you watch "Shark," it's going to be for those Woods-ian rants and for the sheer exuberance he brings to them.
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Subtract James Woods from Shark, and you'd have an empty carcass. Instead, you have a carcass with James Woods and all his crazy energy inside.
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"Shark" is a very conventional courtroom TV drama about a do-good lawyer, and its only distinction is the ferocious acting of Woods.
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The show works only because Woods is a honey-baked ham playing a character who lives to be a showman.
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The lapping tide of gooeyness would be more tolerable if Stark’s empathy made him lose a big case, and if that loss got messy. “Shark,” though, wants to have it both ways: he keeps winning, but now for the right reasons.
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Woods is such a compelling presence that he might be able to elevate even procedural fare.
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This is a paint-by-numbers legal series that's as predictable as they come.
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Of course, it's near impossible to break new ground in legal dramas at this point. But Shark doesn't even try to hide its weariness.
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The level of the writing and the bland supporting cast do not match Woods’ wit, intelligence and slightly scary ferocity.
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It's an attractive premise but a pedestrian execution.
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The episode galumphs loudly across a checkerboard of scenes -- Stark at work, Stark at home, Stark at work at home -- that achieve neither the convincing quality of detailed realism nor the dumb fun of untethered melodrama.
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The problem is, where Hugh Laurie's Gregory House is a hilarious character study, Stark--while played with ebullient aggression by Woods--is just another tool in a suit, and neither the characters, the stories nor the writing rise near House's level.
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"Shark" suffers from a variety of flaws too numerous to detail here, not least its sentimentality, its wooden characters, its tin-eared dialogue.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 45 out of 57
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Mixed: 3 out of 57
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Negative: 9 out of 57
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JoshWSep 9, 2007This show is ridiculous and contains the most unbelievable cases. Judges allow things that would never work in an actual courtroom. Absurd.
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BONNIEH.Aug 29, 2007
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BillMJul 30, 2007