Cookie-cutter courtroom drama

On its surface, it’s hard to imagine a timelier TV series than ABC’s newest prime-time show, For Life. Law and Order may boast that it’s ripped from the headlines, but this new inspired-by-a-true-story legal drama feels as if it owes its existence to the campaign trail.

Part of Donald Trump’s pitch to black voters at the State of the Union Address on Feb. 4 came from his administration’s backing of reforms to mandatory sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders.

Isaac Wright Jr. was once caught in the net of such a law. Serving a life sentence under New Jersey’s “drug kingpin” statute in 1991, he spent his time in a maximum-security prison studying the law. Wright eventually used his legal skills to overturn his own conviction. But in the meantime, he represented fellow inmates, winning freedom for some and reduced sentences for others.

ABC had to be blessing the day it got this premise before John Grisham did.

But that’s all exterior. Pop the hood and you find overly oiled machinery that differs little from a dozen other courtroom dramas rolling off the broadcast assembly line in the last few years.

Perhaps it’s because Wright himself is an executive producer on the series that he and co-producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson seem so intent on making Wright—here named Aaron Wallace—a noble figure. Perhaps he is, but they’ve forgotten that Aaron also needs to be flawed to be interesting. One reason the Bible lives so large in the imaginations of even unbelievers is because it only portrays one figure who is without sin. Everybody else flounders in realistic humanity.

For instance, you would expect a character who ran a nightclub where traffickers pushed massive amounts of cocaine might have at least cut a few corners. Or maybe he was unobservant. Or maybe his business partner took exceptionally effective pains to hide his tracks. But at least in the first few episodes, For Life doesn’t treat this as a question worth exploring. We are to take it on faith that there was nothing at all to Aaron’s conviction.

As we saw in the case of first-time offender Alice Johnson—who received the same penalty for a similar conviction until Trump commuted her sentence—convicts need not be innocent in every respect to receive unjust punishment.

That said, those few signs of life, like when the African American Aaron makes the utilitarian choice to join forces with a white supremacist gang leader, are promising. Less so are several ill-fitting LGBT side plots. The stories of those like Isaac Wright, with corrupt prosecutors in aggressive pursuit, shouldn’t have to share the spotlight with an irrelevant agenda.

For Life, which airs on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Eastern, is a good idea. We can only hope that the execution improves.