In this column, we deliver hot (and cold) takes on pop culture, judging whether a subject is overrated or underrated.
It’s covered Trump’s rise and fall, the January 6 insurrection, the “pee tape”, COVID, Jeffrey Epstein, the ethics of punching Nazis, Black Lives Matter, the murder of George Floyd, antifa, Me Too, microdosing and doomscrolling and yet, somehow, the best show on television is still not getting the attention it deserves.
Now airing its sixth and final season, The Good Fight has never won an Emmy. In fact, it’s only been nominated twice. Both times for its music (yes, Christine Baranski has more Emmy noms for The Big Bang Theory than this show). And it’s struggled to garner meaningful awareness with mainstream audiences too.
I regret to inform you – and my colleagues, who I will obviously berate later – that the show has never once appeared on a “best of” list at this masthead.
Somehow the best show on television is still not getting the attention it deserves.
Has everyone forgotten that SBS On Demand exists? Has the news been too much the past few years to consider watching a show about how the news is too much? I don’t know. But I will be telling people to watch this fun, inventive and hugely relevant show until it is no longer relevant at all, and I am just an old woman cursing a long-defunct, glitch-prone streaming service on the street.
If you don’t know anything about it (don’t worry, you’re somehow in the majority), The Good Fight is a loose spin-off from the 2009 series The Good Wife. That Julianna Margulies-led legal drama was based around a woman, Alicia Florrick, who returns to the law after her politician husband (played by Chris Noth) is exposed for a sex and corruption scandal (classic Mr Big areas).
For the record, I think that show was also underrated. But let’s not start.
The Good Fight picked up in 2017, a year after the original series finished and with only a few of the same characters. Most notably, Alicia’s mentor Diane Lockhart (Baranski): a powerhouse Chicago lawyer and diehard Democrat with a deep love of Hillary Clinton. But as Donald Trump won the US presidency right as showrunners Robert and Michelle King were filming the pilot, it quickly became a different beast.
The Kings chose to lean into the chaos. Within the new setting of a majority black Chicago law firm, they threw their characters, both old and new, into every surreal twist and turn of the Trump presidency and shrewdly reckoned with all the changes it wrought on US justice, culture and business in real time.
Within a few seasons, Baranski’s squeaky-clean girl boss had transformed into an acid-dropping martial artist involved in a book club militia organising to dox alt-right trolls and Nazis.
Though many plot lines are ripped directly from the headlines (the Epstein one is must-watch), it’s always playful rather than gimmicky or trite. And the commentary around progressive causes is never cloying or worthy either.
In fact, The Good Fight is always eager to critique annoying white liberalism – whether through realistic tensions between characters (one on-air argument about Black Lives Matter was actually based on the same conversation happening within the racially and politically diverse writers room) or an entire episode exploring the similarly nightmarish alternative reality of life if Hillary had won.
André Braugher as Ri’Chard Lane and Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart in The Good Fight.Credit:Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+.
I genuinely can’t think of another show on television that is this interesting, and it’s baffling to me that it’s not talked about more. I mean, the cast alone should be drawing eyeballs.
In addition to Baranski (everyone’s favourite drunk aunt) The Good Fight has also featured Rose Leslie, Cush Jumbo, Audra McDonald, Jane Lynch, Wanda Sykes, Delroy Lindo, Michael Sheen and Mandy Patinkin. And this new season has Andre Braugher (from Brooklyn Nine Nine), John Slattery and Alan Cumming (finally reprising his great character, Eli Gold, from The Good Wife) joining in!
Ultimately, the fact that this show has flown under the radar for so long has been a blessing and a curse. As members of the cast have noted, less mainstream attention has meant greater “creative freedom”. And that’s allowed the show to reinvent itself, experiment with different formats (season three was stacked with animated musical shorts, the season 5 premiere recapped the entire year of 2020 in the format of a “Previously On” sequence) and take big swings with its stories.
That’s something really special. Especially in a TV landscape dominated by shows on major streaming platforms that increasingly look like they’ve been cobbled together by bots.
The Good Fight has been living and breathing and growing, week to week, in the same way we all have over the past six years. Don’t miss out completely before it’s gone!
New episodes of The Good Fight are airing exclusively on SBS On Demand and SBS Viceland. You can watch the first five seasons on Paramount+.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
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