It has been quite a year for Christine Baranski. After starring in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, she discovered, on the publicity circuit, that Michael Sheen has nicknamed his penis after her, and went viral with her red-carpet reaction to the notion of of big dick energy, which her character Diane Lockhart has in abundance. But The Good Fight is her home, and it is where Baranski is putting in one of the strongest performances on television right now, playing the scales of human strength and weakness.
It seems strange to find escapism in a series that is so resolutely tied to real life, but one of the many joys of this breezily brilliant drama has been its determination to embrace absurdity without flinching at the grimness of it all. The first season was good – and a relief, showing that even without Alicia Florrick, The Good Wife’s world of Chicago’s legal and political elite could continue merrily along its path.
But it was the audacious second season, largely free from the Madoff-inspired plot around Diane’s temporary financial ruin, that showed this to be more than just a satisfactory sequel. It took The Good Wife’s template of riffing on the headlines, combined it with the breakneck pace of the current news cycle and added the nauseating lurch of populist politics, all the while creating incisive, smart and very funny entertainment from what could have been a sickening brew. The #MeToo movement stoked more than a few storylines, from the fallout over the publication of an unverified list of complaints against predatory public figures to attempts to expose a famous actor accused of a number of sexual assaults.
The supporting cast is excellent, from Cush Jumbo’s no-nonsense ultra-competence as Lucca Quinn to Delroy Lindo as Adrian Boseman, weighing up the pros and cons of rising above the grime, or rolling up your sleeves and diving right into it with everyone else.
These characters, mostly liberal, with some pointed exceptions, have been predictably horrified by the Trump administration: by its draconian immigration enforcement, by its commitment to untruths, by the fanning of populist flames. But any initial paralysis has in this fictional world been turned into action, which makes for a cathartic watch. Here, there is a “pee-pee tape”, showing Trump in a compromising position (or several of them) with Russian sex workers, one of whom is using the firm to try to remain in the US. A Stormy Daniels-esque figure promises Diane a shadowy key to bringing down the government’s key players, by telling her to “follow the women”. It’s as gripping as any crime thriller, and as elegant as any one of Diane’s power suits.
Remarkably, The Good Fight never feels overcooked, considering the scale of its themes. It galloped towards an even bigger picture as the second season ended. “Kill all lawyers” has been swapped out for the even more timely “kill all journalists”, there is corruption festering on all sides of the political spectrum and Diane has found herself entangled in a case that may be too big even for her. Is there any chance that the third season might bring it down a notch? When asked what was to come, Baranski told Deadline earlier this year that she “is possibly going to be indicted for being a co-conspirator to assassinate the president”. The Good Fight is not for turning.
