REVIEW/TELEVISION: 'Prosecutors' Wins Favorable Verdict

The Prosecutors (Mon. (2), 9-11 p.m., NBC)

By Ray Richmond

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - An amazing thing happens to this made-for-TV law picture on the way to becoming a hackneyed, contrived, derivative soap opera: it turns, when you least expect it, into a passionate and realistic character drama about the ties that bind and the choices we make. It doesn't hurt that a first-rate cast delivers in spades.

Looking suspiciously like a two-hour series pilot, The Prosecutors is also the first film in recent memory (bigscreen or small) to detail an interracial marriage and family that admirably resists the temptation to make race an issue. Some of these people are white, some black, some a mixture, but never does skin color drive the plot. It is, in fact, scarcely mentioned.

Film stars the beguiling Michelle Forbes as Rachel Simone, a driven, controlling criminal prosecutor who seems obsessed with her close-cropped hair (think Marcia Clark with exotic eyes). Rachel has it all: great courtroom skills, two lovely children and a husband who is so perfectly wonderful that he had to have been ordered from a catalog.

When they are as good and decent as this guy (Clark Johnson), it's a tipoff that death is near. Sure enough, he is gunned down on the street in cold blood during an armed robbery as his young son watches in bewilderment.

Rachel, who is about to try a high-profile case involving sexual harassment on the Internet -- dubbed the Hacker Hunk, no less -- is momentarily derailed by the death of her beloved husband but not so devastated that she allows herself a day off of work. Denial is the order of the day.

Ordered off of the Hacker Hunk case, Rachel is replaced by Ingrid Maynard (Stockard Channing in her usual superlative performance), an embittered, wheelchair-bound litigator who is tabbed to shake off the cobwebs and earn a conviction against the computer creep.

But all of the legal machinations are merely window dressing for the strikingly genuine delayed reactions of Rachel and her kids to their recent tragedy as the days pile up and the wounds take to festering. Credit a potent yet subtle script from Lynda La Plante (Prime Suspect) and Homicide: Life on the Street executive producer Tom Fontana and co-exec producer Julie Martin.

The only significant flaw in the script is in the predictable way it treats the formulaically antagonistic relationship between Forbes' and Channing's characters, whose hostility is a transparent disguise for the respect lurking underneath.

Forbes' lawyer supplies a dynamic, complex center to The Prosecutors, and Channing lends the production a touch of class. The rest of the characters are unspectacular but solid. Rod Holcomb's direction is restrained and unobtrusive, allowing the action to unfold at its own pace. All tech work is above average.

If The Prosecutors is indeed the first stop on the road to a series life, it's good news for aficionados of quality drama. If we must have lawyers on TV, this is the kind of character-driven project that makes barristers seem practically human.

Cast: Stockard Channing, Michelle Forbes, Judy Reyes, Jeffrey Sams, Clark Johnson, Jay O. Sanders, Richard Poe, Peter Jay Fernandez, Timothy Landfield, Brian Delate, E. Katherine Kerr, Shan Elliot, Billy Allen, Tiasha Reyes, Amelia Campbell.

Filmed in New York City by Scripps Howard Entertainment and La Plante Prods. Executive producers, Tom Fontana, Lynda La Plante, Michele Brustin, Rod Holcomb; producers, Richard Brams, Julie Martin; co-producer, Billy Higgins; director, Holcomb; writers, Martin, La Plante and Fontana; camera, Ken Kelsch; production designer, Charles M. Lagola; casting, Rosalie Joseph; editor, Emily Paine; sound, Cindy Marty, David E. Fluhr, Adam Jenkins, Don Digirolamo; music, David Michael Frank.

Reuters/Variety