Legal surreal comedy (Ally McBeal)

Member Name: sympatic

Product:	Ally McBeal
Date:	14/03/09 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good at the start

Disadvantages: Lost it after a couple of series

When it first came out I really liked Ally McBeal, an American drama / comedy set in a legal firm, it had a quirky slightly surreal feel to it with the strange mind that was the main character Ally McBeal a solicitor in a firm of rather strange individuals.

Over time though I soon got bored with it as the plot lines became all the more outlandish and it struggled to attract new viewers and its main star Calista Flockhart almost disappeared from our screens, quite literally in fact as she got painfully thin, however she has returned in another drama called Brothers and Sisters I think.

My favourite character was one of her colleagues Richard Fish played by Greg Germann the egotistical boss of the firm and with some very strange obsessions.

When this comedy drama was on form it was very funny, I loved the bitchy banter amongst the main clients and at first the vunerability of Ally as a charcter was appealing as she had a series of mishaps and disaster in her professional and personal life which was chaotic however over time it is hard to maintain that appeal as you get to know the character and as such I lost interest at the time when the cast started to change a lot more frequently as they either got cut or left for other projects.

Cast List

Ally McBeal: Calista Flockhart
Richard Fish: Greg Germann
Elaine Vassall: Jane Krakowski
John Cage: Peter MacNicol
Renee Radick: Lisa Nicole Carson
Nelle Porter: Portia De Rossi
Ling Woo: Lucy Liu
Billy Thomas: Gil Bellows
Georgia Thomas: Courtney Thorne-Smith
Larry Paul: Robert Downey Jr

Overall it enjoyed a couple of great series at the beginning but failed to maintain the momentum over time which was a shame.

Summary: American comedy drama