Presumed Innocent: Season 1

I feel like I saw the film Presumed Innocent on an airplane in the 90s. But I may be confusing it with Jagged Edge. I’ve seen both, but until this series came along I may have conflated the two and thought they were the same movie. They’re not. Though that doesn’t preclude the fact they are kind of similar. That has no relevance here other than the fact we used to make these kind of mystery, pot-boiling adult legal dramas in this country. It was a genre that allowed actors to act, sex to be a thing and people to speech-ify in court. Good, adult fun!

In 2024 we are apparently all full-up on superhero and sci-fi genre stuff and Apple TV+ has decided to go back to the tried and true. Enter David E. Kelley. A man who tried this formula back in 2020 with HBO’s The Undoing. That formula being to bring in a cast of movie stars — in that case Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant — murder a young lady involved in a sexual relationship with one of the characters and ambiguously put everyone through the stress of a cracking relationship and the back-and-forth of a very public court case. That attempt was only minimally successful. So along comes Presumed Innocent for attempt number two. But, unlike the previous swing, this is trading on very well-known IP. Granted, well-known to those of us who remember the 1984 summer olympics.

So, you have your adult-oriented story based on previously popular IP. Now you need your star power. Enter Jake Gyllenhaal. The dude fresh off another remake in Road House. And why waste all that working out and subsequent muscles? Let’s have him shirtless as much as possible. And sex scenes. Oooh, and let’s just have him stand naked at the closet talking to his wife. Gratuitous muscle-y nudity for the ladies (or gents) as a bonus! And while Jake is the face of the series, he is surrounded by a murderer’s row (no pun intended) of character actors. Not the least of which is his real-life brother-in-law, Peter Sarsgaard. Just two dudes with double-a’s in their last names. Amazing!

I will pat myself on the back for the amazing way I listened to weekly podcasts about this show, read some Internet stuff and generally consumed Presumed Innocent content without re-spoiling the ending of the original film for myself. After all, it had probably been thirty years since I’d seen it. I had a vague recollection of whodunnit and the resolution to the crime, but I did my best to shield my brain from either recalling it, or exposing myself to the mystery anew. Because at the heart of this tale is the mystery of who killed prosecutor, Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve). Our prime suspect is wack-a-doo, Rusty Sabich (Gyllenhaal). The obsessive colleague who also happens to be having a torrid sexual affair with her. That regularly includes rough play and just general weirdness. But also love? Anyhow, the series seems to go out of its way to make Rusty (we won’t even talk about that stupid name) look like an out-of-control dick. He is unbalanced, this dude. The rippling muscles — which he seemingly gets without ever lifting a weight – would normally point to ‘roid rage, but I think he’s just a fucked-up guy. Carolyn is brutally murdered and he is essentially the only suspect. And is put on trial by his own prosecutor’s office. All this while David E. Kelley relentlessly throws every red herring he could possibly throw at us, making almost everyone a suspect in our heads. Some or most of these red herrings are just silly. But it wouldn’t be a Kelley show without some of that.

I’m going to start by saying that Gyllenhaal is not the best part of this show. Despite pulling what has to be the biggest paycheck and being the visage on the poster. He has a very specific acting style that gives you serious aggression and torment, but very little humanity or humor. That piece goes straight to Sarsgaard and O-T Fagbenle. I’d only seen Fagbenle in The Handmaid’s Tale, but he didn’t really ping for me. And, at first, his mumbly, close-mouthed performance here made me wonder what the hell was going on. It is certainly a choice. But after getting acclimated to it — and seeing him play off Sarsgaard’s more frantic energy — I really loved the way the two interacted. The two of them need a spin-off. It’s that balance of high and low, serious and humor that’s missing in Gyllenhaal’s always-to-eleven character. The story — aside from the goofy head-fakes and the inexplicable bartender/artist dalliance with Barbara Sabich (Ruth Negga) — is relatively straight-forward. There are some things that happen — and especially some confounding decisions by Rusty that seem counter to his supposedly sterling reputation as a smart, talented prosecutor — that come off as contradictory in the moment, but are mostly validated by the show’s resolution. Which I appreciate in retrospect. But there are still some issues — like Bill Camp’s character’s miraculous Chewbacca-like return from death’s door — that were yada’d in a way that felt rushed, but I think that we have to remember this is a David E. Kelley joint that thrives on forward motion. And leave it at that.

Ultimately, this feels like what TV used to be. Or what TV is supposed to be. It’s an imperfect, but incredibly entertaining, mixture of stars, great supporting characters and a twisty-turny, messy ball of something for everyone. It’s no accident that beside the source material, there are whiffs of Basic Instinct in here. And Fatal Attraction and Disclosure… Jesus, I guess Michael Douglas had the market cornered on these sex noir films of the 80s and 90s. This isn’t quite those films, but the vibes are there. The sense of paranoia. The doubt and guilt and obsession. The tension that builds a good mystery and compels us to keep tuning in. I do wonder if this show would have been a bit better if they’d made the Rusty character a little bit more sympathetic — or told Jake to turn it down a notch — but I suppose they did what they did for a reason. I just felt that, unlike Harrison Ford’s version of Rusty, I honestly didn’t care if he was guilty or innocent, he just felt like a dude who should be locked up for his own good and the good of everyone around him. But maybe that’s the point. I believe they’ve already green-lit a season two for this series and I’m really hoping for it to be called Presumed Innocent: Nico & Tommy. But I never get exactly what I want.