"Denny Crane!"

TV If that names means nothing to you then you haven't been introduced to the insane world of Boston Legal, yet another series set in a law firm created by David E. Kelly of Ally McBeal fame. Having not liked much of anything else that Kelly has created (with the exception of Doogie Howser) I came to this with trepidation but an arm full of recommendations. And after an insane pilot which seemed to think that every scene needed to be fifteen seconds long with ten seconds of incidental music each and that such idiotic things as exposition were unimportant (I think my initial bewilderment is probably because this was is a spin-off from Kelly's The Practice), over the other three episodes I watched tonight it settled into being a unexpectedly touching yet surprisingly funny series.

The key is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. It simply understands and encourages the fact that James Spader's performance seems to have dropped in from another dimension and that William Shatner has such a cult following that his mere presence is enough to lift any situation. With Spader it's all about the hand gestures -- a scene does not go by without him stiffly raising one or both of his hands in the air, often holding a glass -- his face sometimes doesn't move for whole minutes at a time and yet its probably one of the best performances because it forces the audience to make up their own mind what he's thinking (see also Greta Garbo in Queen Christina).

Shatner is playing a legendary lawyer whose a partner in the firm and actually you largely imagine he's playing himself -- this is only a beat away from the performance he gave as himself in Free Enterprise. One of the jokes is that he's so much of a legend that simply saying his own name "Denny Crane!" will get the job done -- and the ongoing surprise is that it does. Sometimes he'll steal whole scenes with this schtick, often being deployed in corridors to say those magic two words as other characters passby. The Shatner/Spader interplay is a real hit and since they've apparently appeared in every episode Kelly appears to think so too.

So yes, the writing is very good. Sometimes the director and editor appear to have drunk too much caffeine. Monica Potter's character looks like she's wandered in from another series completely -- although that's not a criticism -- one of the genius aspects of the show is that it knows how important sentiment is in the middle of cynicism and Potter is at the epicentre of that with the beautifully pitched performance. Now and then the odd story has a hint of refried LA Law, but this is simply far better than I had any right to expect it to be and according to the Wikipedia entry, it just gets stranger. Excellent.

"Denny Crane!"