Presumed Innocent Review: Jake Gyllenhaal's Legal Thriller Is Reliable, By-the-Books Television

Early in Presumed Innocent, Apple TV+'s new Jake Gyllenhaal-led legal drama, there's a line of dialogue in which a character acknowledges what kind of show they're on. "People love true crime," says Jaden (Chase Infiniti), the teenage daughter of Rusty (Gyllenhaal) and Barbara (Ruth Negga). "It's a ratings thing." The line works as both a metatextual wink to the audience — you, the viewer, must indeed love a good crime drama, as evidenced by the fact that you hit play on Presumed Innocent to begin with — and commentary on what Jaden and her family are going through. That's the thing about Presumed Innocent: You've seen it all before, but you'll probably keep watching. It's a ratings thing.

Presumed Innocent isn't a true crime story, but it was made by people who are such old pros at crime shows and legal procedurals that it almost feels like one. The eight-part limited series, premiering June 12, is the second screen adaptation of Scott Turow's 1987 novel, after the 1990 film starring Harrison Ford, and was created by David E. Kelley (who also writes or co-writes most of the episodes), one of our most seasoned veterans of this exact type of show. (Kelley was the mind behind series like Boston Legal, Ally McBeal, and Big Little Lies.) Presumed Innocent brings Turow's story into the modern age — which is to say that everyone has iPhones, and that the iPhones play a pretty big role in the ensuing court case — as it introduces us to Rusty Sabich, a Chicago prosecutor who becomes the lead suspect in the gruesome murder of his colleague, Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve), with whom he was having an intense affair that he'd gone to great lengths to conceal.

Carolyn was found dead in her home, beaten and tied up, and it quickly comes out that Rusty was at her house the night she was killed. Rusty vehemently maintains his innocence, but with no other strong suspects, he is put on trial for homicide, putting him directly at odds with the people he works with, including former district attorney Raymond Horgan (a sublime and understated Bill Camp), whom Rusty hires to represent him, as well as the new chief deputy prosecutor, Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard), and the new D.A., Nico Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle), both of whom want to see Rusty behind bars.

6.8

Presumed Innocent

at Apple TV+

Like

• It's a reliable crime thriller
• Every performance is excellent
• Episodes are under an hour

Dislike

• It's incredibly formulaic
• The female characters are all under-developed

If the content of Presumed Innocent isn't all that new or exciting, the drama at least boasts plenty of interesting threads, more than enough to keep you watching. The spiky push and pull between Rusty and his coworkers is compelling, but the show's most intriguing dynamic is the one between Rusty and Barbara, who knew about her husband's affair but was unaware it had been so recently ongoing. Her feelings of betrayal lead her to force him to be honest with their children, though her loyalty makes her stay with him throughout the trial, even as she embarks on a half-hearted, unsexy affair of her own with a bartender. (This is the show's most underbaked plot by a mile, never really managing to thread itself into the central action.) Barbara is a mostly thankless role that Negga adds so much depth to with her measured, soft-spoken performance, and she and Gyllenhaal have strong chemistry; they're very believable as two people who have been married forever and will probably never leave each other, even if they should.

Barbara isn't the only female character who falls flat. The great Elizabeth Marvel is criminally underused as Raymond's sounding board of a wife, Lily Rabe plays a therapist who pops up periodically to tilt her head and furrow her brow at the Sabiches, and in the seven episodes that were screened for critics, next to nothing is learned about Carolyn, which makes it difficult to get invested in her murder, or who did it, or who should be found guilty for it. All of this is to say that it's maybe no surprise that the male characters are allowed more room for introspection: The increasingly volatile Rusty (Gyllenhaal is in top teetering form here) is plagued by fantasies of getting to scream in the faces of the people he works with who are now happily speaking out against him; the slippery, slimy, and scheming Tommy is all too happy to use Carolyn's murder as a way of nabbing Rusty; and Raymond keeps having stress dreams about his head exploding. You can update a murdered woman crime story, but it's tough to get around how this is a genre that caters to the men who live to tell the tale, true or not.

Still, Presumed Innocent is packed with familiar pleasures. Underbaked characters and predictable overarching plot aside, the show throws in a handful of strong twists and turns that lend themselves well to its weekly release format. It's not a series that will reinvent the wheel, but it is so easy to watch. It's not exactly the kind of thing that will have you breaking your remote as you scramble to hit play on the next episode, but it's the latest in a series of well-acted, beautifully constructed, and highly watchable Apple TV+ shows. While it has the aura of a show that could easily be binged in one weekend, Apple TV+ wisely continues its strategy of rolling out episodes the old-fashioned way (every episode coming in at around 45 minutes adds to the throwback viewing experience; it's clear that Kelley has not forgotten his roots in network TV). Reliability is perhaps the highest compliment you can pay a show like Presumed Innocent.

Premieres: The first two episodes premiere Wednesday, June 12 on Apple TV+, followed by new episodes weekly
Who's in it: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Negga, Peter Sarsgaard, Bill Camp, O-T Fagbenle, Renate Reinsve, Lily Rabe, Elizabeth Marvel
Who's behind it: David E. Kelley (creator and writer), J.J. Abrams (executive producer)
For fans of: Any other legal thriller
How many episodes we watched: 7 of 8