This show ran for five years from 2004 to 2008 and is a spin-off from the more serious The Practice.
The heroes of this series are Alan Shore and Denny Crane played by James Spader (of Blacklist fame) and William Shatner (of Star Trek fame). They are nearly thirty years apart but best friends who work in the law firm Crane, Poole and Schmidt. Despite their case load, they take the time to have a drink and a cigar every night in the office balcony while discussing life philosophies and the cases in that episode.
Alan is their best lawyer who has his heart in the right place but uses questionable legal methods to achieve the desired results for the firm's clients and Denny is the ageing founding partner who the other colleagues in the firm try to keep in check albeit unsuccessfully.
The firm's other famous staff includes name partner Shirley Schmidt (played by Candice Bergen), senior partner Carl Sack (played by John Larroquette), associate Denise Bauer (played by Julie Bowen of Modern family fame) and associate Sally Heap (played by Lake Bell).
Why this show is special?
The characters are imperfect and real. There are several personal liaisons among the staff as well as with clients and other strange problems among the staff like night terrors, fear of clowns, handling grief and Alzheimers.
The cases that the firm handles are also unorthodox and colourful. While there are many criminal cases for murders, there are also cases around witch worship, harvest of body parts, homosexuality, bestiality, racism, political issues, mercy killing and solicitation. Alan even takes on the Tobacco industry, big Pharma and a couple of high court appeals.
Why I like this better than Suits?
Suits is about corporate law which makes the cases pretty boring to start with and we can count the courtroom scenes in our fingers as all the lawyer-ing happens in the offices with one legal team trying to get leverage over the other for victory. Apart from Mike not being a lawyer which is revealed in the very first episode, the characters don't break the law. Things are too by the book for my liking. And the actors are too good looking to be real!
Now Boston Legal has criminal cases and many other interesting cases. There are court room scenes in almost all of the 101 episodes handling many tricky real world issues that people generally don't like to talk about.
There is even a celebratory episode about Obama getting elected as President. The characters are just so human and imperfect that you feel for them. 💗
If you want some decadent fun based in the legal world of Boston, where the characters don't play by rules and there is drama to keep you entertained, buy the Boston legal box set now!
Or you can watch it for free with Amazon Prime, sign up for a 30-day free trial here!
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