The politician's wife

Julianna Margulies puts in a wonderfully calibrated

What’s it about?
The Good Wife takes off from an interesting premise. An influential politician has been disgraced by a sex scandal and corruption charges and has been forced to resign his office. That’s his wife standing next to him, in her designer suits and prim pearls — what is she thinking?
She’s spent her whole married life being a pillar of support for her husband, raising his children, keeping his house and encouraging him with word and gesture. How does she deal with this very public humiliation. Apparently, it was these questions that sparked the idea in creators Robert and Michelle King when the Eliot Spritzer sex scandal broke and led them to explore the post-scandal life of just such a wife.
On the show, this character, Alicia Florrick, a former litigator, picks up her life where she’d left it when she married Peter Florrick, the now-disgraced State’s Attorney of Cook County. She’s joined a law firm as a junior litigator in order to support her family after her husband is sent to prison on corruption charges.
It’s a hard climb up the professional ladder for the mother-of-two, as she negotiates difficult cases, competitive colleagues and tries to come to terms with her husband’s betrayal.
Who’s in it?
Julianna Margulies puts in a wonderfully calibrated performance as Alicia. She’s great in all the situations that the character finds herself in — whether it is in her scenes with her husband, where she trembles with barely contained rage, or whether it’s in the courtroom, where she fumbles with her questions and deals with the scorn of her opponents.
Chris Noth has a special appearance as Peter Florrick — it’s nice to finally see Mr Big in a role that does justice to his capabilities as an actor. He brings the right amount of smarminess and intensity to his role here.
Archie Panjabi is another one in the stellar cast, putting in a performance as the hard-as-nails, cynical Kalinda Sharma, an investigator who teams up with Alicia. We can see why she won an Emmy for this cliche-free performance.
Other noteworthy cast members are Christine Baransky as the ambitious law firm partner Diane Lockhart and Josh Charles as Will Gardner, Alicia’s former classmate from law school who just might be in love with her.
What’s hot?
The performances are uniformly good and the story structure allows for three arcs to play at the same time. The first one is obviously episodic and shows the various cases that Alicia deals with; the second is her and her family’s struggle to come to terms with their new circumstances; the third arc deals with the leak of the sex tapes and the political rivalry between Peter and the incumbent State’s Attorney Glenn Childs, played by Titus Welliver, who was last seen on Lost as Jacob’s enemy.
But what we really like is that finally, this is a show from the point of view of a woman who is not obsessed with finding love or buying shoes a la Carrie Bradshaw or is digging her claws into a rival a la the Desperate Housewives characters. This is a real, flesh-and-blood woman, dealing with family and work, and going about her life in no-nonsense pantsuits.
What’s not?
The only thing we would cavil at is the slight predictability — about half an hour before the episode denouement, the viewer knows how the current case will pan out and that an ‘attagirl Alicia’ moment is just around the corner.
Should you be watching it?
Definitely watch this show for the strong performances and the out-of-the-box storyline. Especially recommended for television writers.