Thursday Thoughts – The Glamour of (TV) Law, or, should legal TV shows be plausible, glamorous, or both?

Many of us love our legal movies and TV shows, whether we are talking about thrillers, court dramas, lawyers and judges struggling with personal issues, practice stories, comedies or dramedies, or a bit of all this. We actually have a really wide choice when it comes to the relationship between law and entertainment.

Of course, strict adherence to reality is not a requirement, although we might expect a certain amount of plausibility. Still, what is “plausible?”. We have to find a common ground on this.

Take Suits, for example, my personal favorite, at the moment. And I dare say, a favorite of a lot of people, not necessarily working anywhere close to a legal field.

What do we like about it? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I think it’s that mix of funny, moving, relatable situations and characters, and, yes, glamour. Also, it comes with a lot of splendid legal words and expressions, including legalese made funny and even pleasant. Which is saying something, ain’t it?

But is it plausible? I suppose not, professionally speaking. The two protagonists are both handsome, extremely brilliant, not flawless, far from it, but all-in-all very likeable persons, with a high sense of loyalty and justice and strong ethical values. When they cross the line, it’s for the greater good.

They also handle millions as if they were pennies, deal with a number of extremely diverse cases and win (almost, or in the end) all of them. Even though there may be a price to pay, this is rarely the loss of self-respect due to unconscionable choices. In the real world, they wouldn’t get away with half the things they do and say. You may want to take a look at this post or this one (both from legal websites) to have a better idea of how the “real” life of lawyers looks like. But.

But this isn’t real world. Or isn’t it? We can relate, this is what matters. The language is real, the characters and their emotions feel real, their difficulties, insecurities, joys and losses are not different from ours, the script is amazing in that it makes it all seem so “true“. Implausible and yet so true. And if we can learn legalese, empathize and have fun, well, what’s there to dislike?

Speaking of, I’ve been recently binge watching more and more TV shows,  (and I thought it wasn’t for me), and I’m planning to do something useful with them, including a few (well, a lot of) language-related posts. So, stay tuned!

You can find more on TV shows here (page about Supernatural) and here (blog posts on Downton Abbey).

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