Driving by his deep will of achieving justice, Aaron Wallace, a young smart man, who struggles against being sentenced to life in prison for the false accusation, as he makes his mind and becomes a lawyer, the thing that inspires his life, as he works on helping other innocents to have their freedom.
Safiya walks a thin line between supporting Aaron and cautioning him from taking on the prosecutor in the media. Pinnock's performance gives a palpable, urgent quality to Aaron's intensity.
But Wallace isn't willing to bide his time, and For Life gains dramatic urgency from Pinnock's powerful portrayal of an impatient man not above bending the rules when the odds are stacked so heavily against him.
The most interesting thing, though, in both dramatic and thematic terms, is Wallace's willingness to bend and break the rules to advance his agenda - from his choices of which inmates' causes to adopt, to lying, to outright fabrication of evidence.
Knowing how far he's willing to go to get the justice he deserves is surprising when it's injected into the bones of what otherwise might be a standard drama.
There's a genuinely intriguing story at the heart of For Life, ABC's new legal procedural. But it's buried under a fair amount of frenetic drama that tends to obscure its most interesting ideas.
