Better suited as a mid-day break between "Days of Our Lives" and "Passions," NBC's new series "Conviction" will premier tonight with a pilot that shrieks of melodrama, shamelessly abuses already battered clichés and brings enough confusion to the excessively tired crime-and-punishment genre that viewers may prefer to pick up a copy of Dostoevsky's rendition only for its relative simplicity. Indeed, the latest Dick Wolf drama is not simply bad television — it is the very sort of rubbish that Newton Minnow likely had in mind when he condemned the boob tube as a "vast wasteland."
A complete departure from the quality of the "Law & Order" series, "Conviction" bombards the viewer with more characters than one might possibly be able to digest in a prime time hour. And unlike Lennie Briscoe and Jack McCoy in the original series, these are full-fledged characters with personal lives of such intricate depth that the show's young New York City assistant district attorneys make the 90210 kids look one-dimensional by comparison. The characters, easy to confuse with one another, appear to be each in need of an hour-long Dr. Phil scolding as their egos and sex drives pollute the courtroom show.
We meet one such character sitting in his office, milking a Red Bull and working on a handful of pills as he is told of a guest waiting for him downstairs, "She's the skinny chick with the octopus tattoo from last night. … You left your DA badge in her bed." The line is cute and good for a rare laugh, but amidst a single episode that attempts to balance two gory murders, a horrific drug trial, multiple complicated sexual relationships, a naíve new kid and panoply of power struggles, the cheap gag line amounts to little more than a scene wasted.
Moreover, the show, in balancing what little time it does dedicate to the criminal justice side of things, opts for a brand of excessive goriness wholly unbecoming of a cerebral legal drama. As pictures of a sliced-open small intestine cross the screen, descriptions of how the act was committed with a seven-inch hunting knife run through the audio track and a main character lies dying, coughing up blood in the middle of a street, one is hard pressed to recollect a more graphic show to run on network television. And then, sticking with the theme of matters previously taboo for the peacock network, there are the two bed scenes, one post-coitus and one bra-covered depiction of the act itself. To be sure, the women are beautiful and sex appeal certain, but there is still something to be said for television staying true to the old Hitchcockian notion of allowing the imagination to render ideal that which is otherwise unseen.
Redeemingly, the show does produce one enjoyable character. Julianne Nicholson tackles the role of Christina Finn — one of the many assistant district attorneys to parade across the screen — with a sharp enough level of charisma to actually distinguish her character from the otherwise muddled collage of pretty young faces. Finn is a second year prosecutor trying her first case, up against a cynical judge, lovable defendant who connects with the jury and the personal hurdle of mourning a close friend and colleague. Her amateur yet informed approach is wholly reminiscent of the endearing Vincent Gambini, and though the punch lines are fewer, the character proves to be the one aspect of an otherwise scatter-scribed show capable of connecting with the viewer.
Disappointingly, though, the Finn character is relatively minor, upstaged by the greener and duller Nick Potter (Jordan Bridges), a hopelessly flat amalgamation of seemingly all things cloying, mawkish and cliché. His do-good approach is so simplistic and cheerless that Tobey Maguire ought to have been typecast for the role.
Indeed, one needn't wax nostalgic all the way back to the days of Joe Friday and Bill Gannon to discover a quality criminal justice drama; the original "Law & Order" and at least a couple of its spin-offs have managed to adjust the winning formula to the modern audience's tastes with great success. But Dick Wolf's latest offering, "Conviction," seems to misfire on nearly all fronts. In the end, the show feels like such a hopscotch collage that its writers may actually have done well to take a cue from Jack Webb, ditch the hyperbolic melodrama and stick with a "just the facts, ma'am" approach.
