- Network: USA
- Series Premiere Date: Aug 15, 2025
Critic Reviews
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The series is at its best when we are introduced to Pritcher and watch in horror as his character is exposed to the outside world. However, the story isn’t as fluid or solid in scenes involving Rudy and Sarah, which should evoke emotional resonance that doesn’t memorably materialize.
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The Rainmaker may yet end up a fairly solid legal drama by the time the final credits roll, but at best it will prove an uneven one. In the meantime, the jury's still out.
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What’s strange and ultimately damning about this adaptation is that, despite the broadly detailed but engaging roster of lawyer characters, there’s very little courtroom drama in the first half of the series, and instead quite a lot of kidnapping, murder, and extraneous conspiracy.
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None of this is halfway interesting, and when the show cuts away from the central trio of Rudy, Bruiser and Deck, the series loses whatever snap it has, largely because the other characters are bland and undeveloped. Even Rudy is dull. That’s a matter of the writing but also the casting.
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It’s going for a politics-free world, and it achieves it. There’s nothing objectionable, but nothing much to chew on either.
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There’s a noticeable lack of fire behind it. Which sums up The Rainmaker in a nutshell: It’s a likeable enough soap opera that’s only worth half of your attention.
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It’s depressingly pedestrian as it tells the story of recent law school grad Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) who fights for the underdog in court against jerky legal lion Leo Drummond (John Slattery, chewing scenery with wild abandon)
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USA’s The Rainmaker is a tepid, muddled retelling of the classic John Grisham legal thriller that falls short, despite John Slattery’s charms.
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It’s remarkable how much the older generation of lawyers ends up outshining their mentees. .... “The Rainmaker” labors mightily to give its protagonist some dimension, from a backstory about a death in his family to a subplot about intervening in his neighbor’s abusive marriage. None of it works.
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Maybe the final five episodes will flesh that out amid its conspiratorial rabbit hole, but the initial run certainly doesn’t. What’s left is a jumbled cross between a legal drama, a soap, and a true crime series that ultimately doesn’t manage to say much at all.
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While everyone does a good job in their roles, the story at the center of The Rainmaker feels like something we’d see in a CBS law procedural, not a Grisham-based legal drama.
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“The Rainmaker” is more like a drizzle, tapping out a tiring, repetitive beat.
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Much of “The Rainmaker” is overwritten, underwritten or just clichéd (Ms. Bryson’s character, for instance). Sometimes a small directorial touch catches one off-guard.