TV Review: The Split Series 1 / The Good Fight Series 2

If female-fronted lawyer shows are your bag (and why wouldn’t they be!), the twin joys of The Split and The Good Fight have marvellous to behold

“Kill all the lawyers”

If I’m completely honest, Abi Morgan’s The Split did leave me a tad disappointed as it veered away from its legal beginnings to something considerably more soapy over its six episodes. The personal lives of the Defoe clan well and truly took over at the expense of any of the cases they were looking after and even if that family includes Nicola Walker, Annabel Scholey and Deborah Findlay, it’s still a bit of a shame that it ended up so schlocky.

The second series of The Good Fight proved far superior in terms of commenting on the US legal system, locating its place in the current political climate and also throwing in twists aplenty in the personal lives of its cast. Still led by the estimable Christine Baranski, with Cush Jumbo and Rose Leslie, they’ve also added Audra McDonald into the mix to make it an even more appealing prospect.

The way it tackled fake news, Charlottesville, Facebook’s overreach, even the infamous pee tape was breathtaking in its daring ingenuity. And weighed against the experience of Baranski’s Lockhart and McDonald’s Reddick-Lawrence, there was real impact to its thoroughly no-nonsense approach, even now there’s something so bold about something so boldly anti-Trump (especially since it is so well-reasoned).

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