“Presumed Innocent,” premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, is a television adaptation of Scott Turrow’s 1987 novel, previously adapted as a 1990 Harrison Ford film (or Alan J. Pakula film, to identify the director). . A semi-erotic legal thriller, with the indefatigable David E. Kelley as showrunner, it is a limited series, although at eight episodes, perhaps not limited enough.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Rusty Sabich, the chief prosecutor of the Chicago district attorney's office, who, as this train leaves the station, learns that his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve, in flashbacks and gruesome photographs of the scene of the crime) has been murdered. The disposition of the bound body reminds Rusty of a case he and Carolyn had successfully prosecuted a few years earlier, although the person they convicted, Liam Reynolds (Mark Harelik), is currently in prison.
Rusty is a family man, married to Barbara (Ruth Negga), with teenage sons Jaden (Chase Infiniti) and Kyle (Kingston Rumi Southwick), but from the first glimpse we get of Carolyn as a person still alive, we know it without being one. . They told her that she and Jake had been having an affair. This will complicate things when Dist. Attorney. Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp), up for re-election, assigns Rusty to the case. Despite Rusty's reputation as a tax sniper, it seems clear to everyone except Raymond that this is not a good idea.
Things only get worse when Raymond loses his position to new District Attorney Nico Della Guardia (OT Fagbenle) and Rusty is replaced by his rival Tommy Molto (Peter Saarsgard) and, what's more, becomes the prime suspect in the murder. from Carolyn: A reasonable assumption given everything we know. They have shown themselves. But Rusty will continue investigating on his own, with the help of the detective. Alana Rodríguez (Nana Mensah).
To maintain interest and fill eight episodes with newly conceived twists and turns, the 20th century story has been expanded with added characters, possible suspects and lines of investigation. (And updated with smartphones and digital trinkets, which, along with the six- to ten-episode serial order, have perhaps changed the way screenwriters tell their stories more than anything.)
Kyle (Kingston Rumi Southwick, left), Jaden (Chase Infiniti) and Barbara (Ruth Negga) in “Presumed Innocent.”
(Apple TV+)
And since this is from Kelley, former attorney, creator of “Ally McBeal” and “Boston Legal,” we'll be spending more time in the courtroom, which is usually time well spent. For the most part, these scenes, coming into their own from this year of courtroom news, seem plausibly true to life. As Judge Lyttle, Noma Dumezweni seems as impartial a jurist as one would expect if he were accused of murder, and when things get overheated, he is treated as abnormal and dealt with accordingly.
Even more than their plots, the mysteries live and die on their characters, and Rusty, who is both the investigator and the accused, is neither sympathetic nor does Gyllenhaal make him curiously unsympathetic. In fact, he becomes more boring as he becomes more desperate to prove his innocence, which is not in itself a foregone conclusion. However, whether he did it or not remains an interesting question. In fact, of all the possible murderers (some of whom, I'm sure, won't even be presented as possible until the eleventh hour), he's the only person you wouldn't care to consider guilty.
But he's not the only person in this series. Negga makes a strong impression as Barbara, who builds her story in scenes with a therapist (Lily Rabe) and a therapeutic bartender (Sarunas J. Jackson); the latter gives us perhaps the most unexpected line of dialogue of the year, when the waiter asks Barbara if he knows about the I Ching and she replies, “I know about John Cage, Brian Eno, and the random creative workings of things.” (Not an amazing answer, we've seen it's artistic, but references to random music rarely appear in legal thrillers. Or anywhere on television.) These encounters are a little outside the business of the series, but they give the actress some other notes to play, and she plays them wonderfully.
Among other standouts, Camp is engaging as Raymond, who does what's best for his infuriating friend. Saarsgard's Tommy, who will be Rusty's prosecutor, if not his pursuer, seems both somewhat scheming and genuinely dedicated to his job, and the actor downplays it to the point of making it intriguing.
It is a simple production, mostly simple and artisanal. Only seven episodes were provided for review, so the solution, which may differ from the book and movie, remains a mystery to critics. There's enough reason to suspect that a new ending could be in sight given all the newness that came before. And there's little reason to suspect anyone other than Rusty, who, aside from circumstantial evidence pointing to him, has a bit of a temper, though of course, by the rules of the form, this also makes him less of a suspect. likely. .
But as in all mysteries, many characters lie, and it can so convincingly seem that the actors themselves were not told the truth. The final hour may ask you to reevaluate any of them.
