"The Jury" (2004) TV series

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Creator:

Barry Levinson

Seasons:

1

Release Date:

8 June 2004 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

New York is the setting for this courtroom drama about a jury of 12 different men and women delibrating...

Plot Keywords:

Courtroom | Lawyer | Jury | Verdict | Murder

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Adam Busch	...	Steve Dixon (10 episodes, 2004)
Cote de Pablo	...	Marguerite Cisneros (10 episodes, 2004)
Jeff Hephner	...	Keenan O'Brien (10 episodes, 2004)
Patrice O'Neal	...	Adam Walker (10 episodes, 2004)

Also Known As:

The Circuit (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

USA:60 min (10 episodes)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Bayonne, New Jersey, USA

Company:

20th Century Fox Television

Trivia:

The judge in the first season was supposed to be played by Sidney Lumet, director of _Twelve Angry Men (1957)_. When Lumet got injured falling on some ice, 'Barry Levinson', producer and director of the show, stepped in to play the role. Levinson acts in the first twelve episodes.

Great for people willing to invest time in it

Thanks to law shows today, like the many Law and Order spin-offs and the god-awful CSI franchises, people want cop/court shows to be over the top, contain lots of fights, have twists and turns in the evidence and be in your face. This show builds slowly and focuses on the fact that average people are deciding someone else's fate. I don't usually like court shows (I can only watch L&O up until when the case goes to trial, because the trials are so boring), but I like this show. The problem is that I wouldn't have bothered to notice this show if it wasn't a Fontana/Levinson project. Because I loved Homicide so much, I can appreciate what they're trying to do here. There's only been three episodes so far, but I like that the cases have been "average." TV shows always have to have a case that's been "ripped from the headlines," and is so sensational that it's impossible to believe. Instead, The Jury had an episode about an inmate who killed a priest during a riot. One juror wondered what the point was of trying him, because either way the man was going back to jail to finish his sentence from a previous crime. Yet the writers (including James Yoshimura, who wrote Homicide's much-celebrated "Subway" episode) still use that "back-page" subject matter. It is their willingness to go into typical crimes that makes this show interesting. Instead of going for the shocking like CSI does, they find shocking things in everyday life.

Yeah I remember The Beat too. ;)