‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Premiere Recap: Legal Affairs

In the future, every sexy thriller that’s a few decades old will be made into a TV show on a streamer. Andy Warhol said that. Or something to that effect. I don’t remember the specifics. Point is, Fatal Attraction, Dead Ringers, American Gigolo, and Damage (via the Netflix remake Obsession) have all gotten the season-length makeover treatment, though thus far none have made it past that point. (To be fair, Dead Ringers and Obsession were not designed to.) 

With Presumed Innocent, Apple TV+ goes once more unto the breach. Based on the legal thriller novel of the same name by Scott Turow, already adapted into a Harrison Ford movie by Alan J. Pakula in 1990, it has all the ingredients of…well, of the Fatal Attraction remake that Paramount+ aired, oddly. A handsome leading man playing a prosecuting attorney, a beautiful other woman he meets at work, a gorgeous wife at home, a fantastic character actor playing the guy’s work husband, even an in-ground pool as a signifier of both wealth and family. Just swap the city and the cast and It’s like hearing two different cover versions of the same song. It’s a familiar tune, but a catchy one.

This Presumed Innocent is helmed by writer-producer David E. Kelley, no stranger to movie stars dealing with murder on the small screen. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Rusty Sabitch, a lead deputy prosecutor in the Chicago state’s attorney’s office who catches a hell of a case: the brutal, BDSM-tinged murder of his colleague, Susan Pohlemus (Renate Reinsve). 

In addition to wreaking emotional havoc on her colleagues — Kelley, director Anne Sewitsky, and the cast do not skimp on making these people look completely shellshocked for the first couple of days after the murder, as they ought to look — Carolyn’s death couldn’t come at a worse time politically. Rusty boss and friend, current State’s Attorney Raymond Horgan (the great Bill Camp), is in the midst of a bitter election battle with a colleague, Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle, doing understated and laser-precise work as a certain type of passive-aggressive asshole). This also pits Rusty against Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard), an ally of Nico’s, who stands to take Rusty’s job if his man wins. 

The case becomes a morass of men shouting, snarking, making snide comments, backstabbing each other, even (on Tommy’s part) withholding evidence to slow its progress and sabotage Horgan’s reelection chances. It works. And with Nico and Tommy flying the plane as Horgan gets booted out the emergency exit, they are free to train their sights on their new top suspect for the murder: Rusty, the man Carolyn had an affair with, and who may be the father of the baby she was carrying when she was killed. 

To be clear, this is not presented as an episode-ending surprise. It’s clear almost from the moment Gyllenhaal’s Rusty receives the phone call breaking the news that this woman was more to him than a colleague. Moreover, it’s clear to his wife Barbara (Ruth Negga), too. She’s known about the affair, he ended it, they’ve more or less worked through it. It’s kind of a refreshing approach, honestly.

But Barbara wisely perceives that Rusty’s involvement in the case (prior to becoming its lead suspect) is an indication that he still loves Carolyn. And indeed, he does. Oh, he loves Barbara and their kids more, but as he tells his therapist (Lily Rabe), Carolyn had a litany of superlative qualities with none of the baggage that comes from a decades-old relationship that began with a shotgun wedding at age 20, as his and Barbara’s did. 

The final piece of the puzzle is the nature of the murder. Carolyn was hogtied prior to her murder, in a similar fashion to a case she and Rusty tried together years earlier. Is this some kind of revenge ploy by Liam Reynolds (Mark Harelik, whom I’m always happy to see), the man they put away, perhaps wrongfully? The guy’s such an indigent whacko it seems hard to believe he could pull such a thing off from the inside, even though he says he wishes he had. 

Kelley is the kind of consummate TV pro they don’t really manufacture anymore, because the kind of lengthy series with which he made his bones — L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Boston Legal — are no longer made in the kind of volume that leads to the formation of David E. Kelleys. Whatever you think of his work, and lately he’s tons of it for every network and streamer you’d care to name, it moves with the kind of crackling rhythm designed to keep you from changing channels during the commercial break. He makes crisp, confident television.

His smarts display themselves best in the almost gladitorial combat between Horgan and Rusty on one side, and Nico “Delay” Guardia (so nicknamed, to his face, due to his penchant for delaying cases until the defense runs out of money and gives up instead of actually taking them to court) and Tommy on the other. There’s no pretense of collegiality here, no sheathed knives coming out when you least expect it: These guys fucking hate each other, and they’ll fucking say it, too, with all the fucking f-bombs you might expect. Watching Camp, Gyllenhaal, Fagbenle, and Sarsgaard tear into each other with gusto and glee is every bit the treat you’d expect. My favorite quotes: Tommy muttering “You dismiss me at your peril” like a supervillain when Horgan gives Rusty the case, and Horgan responding to Tommy telling him his belligerence at the funeral is beneath him with “Nothing’s beneath me. I once fucked an ottoman.”

Negga’s Barbara is another example of Kelley cutting right to the chase where other writers might hem and haw and conceal and delay. It’s true she spends most of the episode reacting to Rusty reacting to Carolyn’s murder, in the fashion of your average Long-Suffering Wife. But she’s not an inert styrofoam packing peanut of a character designed to safely transport her man from Plot Point A to Plot Point B. She’s a lively presence of her own, secure enough in their love to be there for him in his grief, but only to a point. She’ll hold him at home, tell him she’s sorry, but she’s not going to the memorial service, and she’s no dummy about what his initially taking the case (before Tommy took it away from him) means about his lingering feelings.

Also, I know this is faint praise, but Presumed Innocent’s Chicago looks like a real city, not the lazy blue/orange color-graded nowhere-land where so many TV shows appear to take place these days. Clearly some pains were taken by Sewitsky, Kelley, and director of photography Daniel Voldheim to make this show look of a piece with the ‘80s and ‘90s blockbusters-for-adults aesthetic of office glass and city concrete. I appreciate it, even if it’s such a simple thing that you might not even notice it unless you’re a professional critic getting teal and turquoise blasted into your eyeballs by every DP on TV.

My only real concern here is whether the show will keep the sexy stuff front and center. It ought to! Gyllenhaal, Negga, and Reinsve are lovely-looking people, and the intense connection between Rusty and Carolyn, furthered by their exploration of the kind of rough sex he and Barbara historically did not have, is the key to the entire thing. The otherwise very strong but short-lived Fatal Attraction erred by getting the relationship between prosecutor Joshua Jackson and his colleague Lizzy Caplan over with way too early. 

I am always here for any drama that digs into what makes people irresistible to one another, as surely as if they were being shoved together by a Death Star trash compactor. I’ve felt that, maybe you have too, and it’s the very stuff of drama. Let’s see if inveterate crowd-pleaser Kelley’s got the goods.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.