The series follows a series of tasks carried out by dedicated judges, prosecutors and public attorneys, who offer a true model of hard work. These attorneys Dumel works with bailiffs, employees and police to enforce the law and bring justice to the people of Los Angeles amidst many challenges and bad laws.
All Rise could settle down and concentrate on the two people who make the show work - Missick and Helgenberger - but it is just as likely to become a generic courtroom drama that tries too hard to be funny.
As it stands, this courtroom drama has the feel of the kind of show CBS develops well, a lightly serialized episodic diversion structured around open-and-shut cases and carried by a solid lead.
Its main conviction seems to be that judges should function not as neutral arbiters of the law but as assistants to defense lawyers and that empathy, rather than evidence, should govern judicial outcomes.
All Rise at least tries to be entertaining, in the seriocomic earnest-meets-silly style of second-tier David E. Kelley. And there's a genuine star performance from Simone Missick.
Nothing you'll see rises to any level of must-see. Instead it's all pretty much preachy and pedestrian, with the diversity of the cast working against itself in terms of this show's labored approach to injustice and discrimination.
