On Fox, 'Justice' Is Served Swiftly

From left, Rebecca Mader, Eamonn Walker and Victor Garber are L.A. attorneys who don't come cheap in "Justice," which debuts tonight on Fox. (By Justin Lubin -- Fox)

When the man suspected of killing his wife with a golf club tells Trott that those in the district attorney's office gave him certain assurances if he turns himself in, Trott says: "He lied, Kevin. They do that."

Representing the media at their worst is Katherine La Nasa as Suzanne Fulcrum, host of a nightly law-and-order show. She's clearly patterned after that fire-breathing dragon, the ironically surnamed Nancy Grace. Trott pastes on his happy face and makes himself conspicuously available to her, and to her viewers. (She's one heaping helping of snakes-on-a-plane all by herself, she is.)

Is Fulcrum on the level? Why, we wouldn't dream of asking.

"Justice" has one more built-in gimmick. At the end of each show, we return to the scene of the crime and see, as Fox puts it, "what no lawyer can ever see: what really happened." It is conceivable that -- even on tonight's premiere -- the law firm could have channeled all its considerable resources into defending a guilty party.

The revelation scene in tonight's episode seems a bit too glib, although it comes as a relief considering where a viewer's sympathies are likely to lie. And as stylishly modern as "Justice" might be, it includes a courtroom scene of a prosecutor slamming a golf club down on an imaginary victim's head that loudly echoes Raymond Burr using an oar for the same purpose in the 1951 movie "A Place in the Sun."

Some crime-drama traditions, it appears, must be upheld, even when all the trappings have been digitized and modernized. "Justice," to put it in culinary terms, is a banquet of gourmet fast food, all of it delicious and addictive -- even if it could probably never pass for actual nourishment.

Justice (one hour) debuts tonight at 9 on WTTG (Channel 5).