Unexpectedly Into The Good Wife
By way of a change from the last few rants:
Courtesy of some channel surfing on the part of The Mrs, he discovered, and found himself enjoying an episode of, The Good Wife, which led to a Season One boxset coming into the house and several evenings given over to a couple of episodes at a time. It's a million miles away from the geeky fare that usually grabs the attention of us both, having no aliens, spaceships, time travel or dysfunctional cartoon families in it, but despite that we're both really gripped by it.
For those not in the know, it's the story of one of those 'stand by your man' wives caught on the periphery of a political/sex scandal and forced to return to her former career as a lawyer when her husband is jailed. Julianna Margulies (really good here) is the wife in question, and the ongoing stories weave between her legal cases, the law firm, her family/home life as she deals with her teenage kids and an absent husband, and the husband's political and legal wrangles as he tries to recover from the scandal and overturn his conviction. There are multiple layers to each of these too, with her new boss being her old law school flame, for example. There's a great cast assembled around the lead, and the individual stories are generally pretty strong.
I'm not going to delve too much into reviewing the detail, because at this point we're viewing stories that are two years old, but I did want to recommend it.
And also to note that having thought about it, it seems to be holding both our interest by existing at a conjunction between two types of TV series we each individually like. For me, it's squarely in the LA Law school, a series I absolutely loved back in the day, and plays in that same 'office politics and relationships mixed with courtroom drama' space.
For The Mrs, I think the secret is in his description of the series to someone as "It's only a legal drama to the extent that House is a medical drama". House, a series he loves and I can't stand, is absolutely one of those that he'll consume an entire season of at a sitting, and I can see where he makes a connection between it and The Good Wife structurally.
We're into the final third of Season One, with the whole second season ahead of us before we're caught up on the US screenings. Worth a look.