Catching up with the Angel Gabriel - in a Suit

And so, I am finally up to speed with Suits.

My broken heart at having had to delay my trip back to LA was finally mended yesterday when I sat down to watch the four episodes of Suits I had missed when in the UK.

  

There is nothing quite like the excuse of jet-lag to enable you to don a dressing gown and lounge on the sofa with a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in another.

  

The fabulous Patrick J. Adams, who plays Mike Ross, appears to have grown a foot, and now spends more time kissing than talking, which is a good thing for viewers, although less good for the firm, I suspect.

  

Gabriel Macht is even more beautiful than I remember him. The hair and the suits of his character, Harvey Specter, are perfect, every follicle and stitch a tribute to the make-up and costume departments who make this faultless specimen of manhood possible.

  

Then there’s Harvey’s hunger for power – never more impressive and sexy than when his back is against the wall (which brings me to another fantasy, but enough dribbling for one day. But gosh, he is beautiful).

 

It is, quite simply, fabulous TV, and now I will be living for Tuesdays for the foreseeable future. So don’t call, don’t drop in, just leave me to my angel.

  

I’ve also been catching up on Mistresses, which is as laughable as Suits is brilliant. And yet it is strangely addictive. Quite why Joss (Jes Macallan) has chosen to be a lesbian with the clingy Alex (Shannyn Sossamon), when she had a bloke who could get her bra off in one flick of a light switch movement, is anybody’s guess, but she’s still my favourite.

  

Savi (Alyssa Milano) has good taste in necklaces, but why do her eyelashes permanently look as if they are trying to do a runner from her face? Give them a visa and they’ll be off, I’m telling you.

  

April (Rochelle Aytes) is prettiest of the bunch, but it’s a bit of a bummer that her dead husband turned out not to be dead, after all. Still, she should have been grateful for the extra customer in the shop. Has she sold ANYTHING since the series began?

  

And then there’s Karen (Yunjin Kim), who stares into the middle distance while speaking in a voice that is so tiny, it could send a tiger into hibernation. Will they ever manage to excavate a personality? Will she ever get her fringe cut? Will she ever manage to get another patient, now that the only one she ever had is dead?

  

There is not a man in Mistresses to compete with Gabriel Macht, alas, and Dominic (Jason George) is the best of a very mediocre bunch.

  

But he and Savi work in a very odd law firm that is not a patch on Harvey’s Pearson/Whatever-that-English-bloke’s-name-is-in-the-second-half-of-the-title.

  

They never have any clients, never do any work, and have all their mates and spouses popping in at all hours for casual chats.

  

Apart from Savi and Dom’s quickie, there’s no office sex there, either, whereas in Pearson Thingummy, you can’t even go into the photocopying room without ending up with someone else’s sticky DNA on your hands.

  

British actor Max Beesley has now joined the cast as “fixer” Stephen Huntley for a few weeks and he is ALWAYS in the photocopying room. Let’s just say he never emerges with anything in his hands. Not papers, anyway.

  

And here’s the really confusing thing – Gary Cole, who plays Harvey’s nemesis, Cameron Dennis, in Suits, is also ballistics expert Kurt McVeigh and on-off lover of Diane in that other great legal drama, The Good Wife.

  

Anyway, Suits is back, and that’s all I care about.

My Angel Gabriel is flying high once more.

The Angel Gabriel

For months, I have been waiting.

Months of longing, tears and frustration. Months of checking the TV schedules in magazines and throwing them across the room when it failed yet again to materialise.

Then, a few weeks ago, the TV announced that it would be returning on June 16^th.

  

I stayed in. Waited again. More longing in my heart and loins. Then, I discovered that the return date was July 16^th. I was a whole month early. More tears.

  

But this week, it returned. Suits. The brilliant, fantastically produced, stunningly written, Suits. Even repeating the word thrills me. Suits.

  

Gabriel Macht in a suit. A handsome, sexy man playing handsome, sexy lawyer Harvey Specter. In a suit. Gabriel, my angel.

  

And all would have been well with the world, had I not been in the UK. I would never have booked that flight, had I known the television trauma I was about to endure: awake at 5am in my UK bed, unable to sleep, knowing what I was missing thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.

  

My flight schedule meant that when I returned to the US on Wednesday, I would have had two episodes to watch. Delayed gratification is good, I reasoned. But I have had to change my flight again, as I have the chance to interview Eva Longoria in Spain at the beginning of August.

It was a tough call – the world’s most beautiful woman versus the world’s most beautiful man. Eva won out. By the time I return to the US, there will be five episodes of Suits to catch up on. I just hope that the delayed gratification doesn’t kill me before I get my hands on the remote.

  

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love Suits, which is also perfectly cast, with not a glimmer of a weak link in the chain. Macht is, quite simply superb. When I recently bumped into E L James, author of 50 Shades of Grey, I begged her to get Macht cast in the lead role of Christian Grey.

He really would be perfect. Please, please, please. He’d be great. On and on and on I went. Alas for her, flying at 35,000 feet, she had no escape route. I just pray it lodged somewhere.

  

Specter’s sidekick, Mike Ross, played by Patrick J. Adams, is the maverick turned good guy to Specter’s mean and bad.

And Rick Hoffman’s Louis Litt is a character with barely one redeeming feature, and whose attempts to be a better person are always doomed to failure as a result of his weaknesses – namely, paranoia and insecurity. But it is those weaknesses with which the audience identifies, and that is why we still like him.

The USA Network is my favourite station  - my other big worry at the moment is the date of the season premiere of White Collar; I am very worried about what is happening to Peter in jail. Maybe that, too, has already returned, and, when I finally get back to the US, I will be able to spend an entire week in my dressing gown, catching up.

In the meantime, Twitter people, stop giving the game away in Tweets before the rest of us have had chance to view. I may not be a fan of delayed gratification, but at the moment it’s the only thing keeping me going.

Well, that and the fact that I’m going to meet Eva Longoria.

  

    

     

Overdosing on Judge Alex, Zimmerman and CNN

Is it possible to overdose on Judge Alex? Is it possible to overdose on court TV in general? Do I really need to know the minutiae of Florida law, when I live in California? Am I really a closet criminal/juror/lawyer? Am I just finding more reasons for avoiding the work I should actually be doing?

   

These, and many questions like them, have been occupying me this week as I have sat down to watch the minute by minute coverage of the George Zimmerman trial. For those not in the know, he is on trial for the murder (Second Degree) of 17 year old, unarmed Trayvon Martin, whom he claims he shot in self-defence – or defense, as I now have to write it (along with color, favor etc. . . . but that’s another story). 

So far, so relatively straightforward. But here’s the crux: Zimmerman is white Hispanic, Trayvon was black. And the black community is up in arms over what they perceive to be a racist killing.

    

Actually, up in arms is putting it very mildly. They have taken to Twitter declaring that Zimmerman will be raped and/or killed if he goes to jail, and certainly killed if he “walks” and tries to resume normal life.

   

I am gripped. I am gripped by everything. 

Why George has put on so much weight (he hasn’t just eaten all the pies, he’s eaten the factory that made them), for example? Why is the Prosecution  fielding witnesses that help the Defense (more of that anon)? Why had the Prosecution’s “star” witness, Rachel Jeantel (who was the last person to speak to Trayvon on the night he was killed), not been coached beforehand (“You listenin’?” she aggressively asked Defense Attorney Don West)? When the judge announces that the jurors’ lunch has “arrived”, what is it?  

   

In my office, during the day, I have the live feed from Fox 35 in Orlando, where the trial is taking place. In my living room, I have the trial live on CNN, but with intermittent analysis. At night, I watch HLN and Fox, and Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan on CNN.

    

Judge Alex Ferrer, whose courtroom show Judge Alex entertains me every weekday at 2pm, has been on everything. He seems to be the only person who is up to speed on Florida law (such as the reasons behind the prosecution having to field witnesses that potentially damage them) and the legalities of a case that has “experts” responding emotively, rather than delivering unbiased opinion. Women with big hair and tombstone teeth shout at frightened men with glasses as they all try to second-guess what the jury is thinking (six people – allowed under Florida law. 

You see? I am learning, so it’s technically work).

    

The women’s dress sense varies according to age. The younger ones go casual, like Sporty Barbie; the older ones look like Norma Desmond after a night on the tiles. Judge Alex looks like an ad for Savile Row: impeccably dressed, perfectly ironed (or “pressed” as I now call it over here), shirts and exquisitely chosen matching ties. He is by far the best looking expert and stands out as a Greek god in the Fraggle Rock of men before us, so, naturally, I agree with everything he says.

    

It’s not hard to do that, though, when he applies reason and the law to the evidence. But although I have always been in favour of cameras in the courtroom, what worries me with these big, publicity generating cases, is that viewer access spawns a level of hysteria from people with preconceived ideas (long before they have heard the evidence) that I suspect, with Zimmerman, will end in violence – not least because, so far, the prosecution (to me) is not proving its case, and he looks likely to go free, or, at most, have the charge reduced to manslaughter.

    

The hatred and aggression appearing on a second by second basis on the Twitter feed that accompanies Fox 35, is truly disturbing. If they had to weed out this kind of prejudice during jury selection, small wonder that it took them so long (interestingly, the jury is made up of six women). These are not people who want to pass judgment when presented with the facts of the case; they are vigilantes who, in reality, are mimicking the very vigilante behaviour of which they accuse George Zimmerman. This probably says more about the nature of social networking than it does about the pros and cons of cameras in court, but in this case, the ethics of the two seem inextricably linked.

    

The public is nevertheless fascinated by the workings of the law and, as Judge Alex points out elsewhere, if the public is allowed into the courtroom (which they are in the UK, as well as the US), all the cameras are doing is making the proceedings available to a wider audience.

    

Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher’s 1986 series LA Law ran for eight seasons on NBC in the US and was picked up, to huge critical acclaim, in the UK (I have every episode on videotape – remember videos? They were those bricks you started to chuck out at the turn of the Millennium). Dozens of law-based shows, on both sides of the Atlantic, have followed. I reckon I have seen every episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit at least half a dozen times.

    

The truth is, that all human life can be seen in a courtroom - love, jealousy, sex, death, prejudice, empathy, hatred – and when several of these factors come together in a big case, it is as if we are united as an audience in the very essence of life’s daily dramas, but magnified a thousand fold.

   

I’ve missed my daily Zimmerman dose today, as the trial is off air for the weekend. But the week’s appearances of Judge Alex are still stored in my Time Warner Cable box, so my legal fix is never more than a click away on the remote. Yes, I’m afraid I really am that sad.

Or just someone who really cares about nice laundry.   

    

Matthew Rhys, Nudity and Rims

Dressing gowns could have been invented just for watching TV. 

This week, having seen just two episodes of The Americans in the UK, I bought and downloaded the other 11 in LA and, over two days, watched the lot. In my dressing gown.

    

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into one of its stars, Matthew Rhys, on a Virgin flight from London to LA. Matthew’s family lives just a couple of miles from me in Cardiff, yet it was only in LA three years ago that I finally got to meet him.

    

He is an extraordinary actor. His performance as gay lawyer Kevin in Brothers and Sisters was genius; no less so is his undercover Russian spy, Phillip Jennings, in The Americans. And he's always getting his kit off. Always in the name of is art, of course.

    

While The Americans is not yet a box set, increasingly viewers have turned to these packages to view shows they have missed. More than anything, it saves time. No ads, no having to remember to set your Sky Plus or TIVO – you just slob out on the sofa for 12 hours with an Indian takeaway and a bottle of Rioja and forget to shower as you become immersed in the story.

    

I watch way too much TV. There are episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Cold Case I have seen several times over. My daytime fix, the courtroom show, Judge Alex, at 2pm, is programmed into my Record list, and I am currently watching repeats of shows I first saw just weeks ago. 

Judge Alex is like a favourite cartoon: no matter how many times you see it, it’s still funny. I was hugely entertained this week by a case involving heavy discussions about rims, which means something entirely different in the US (think cars, rather than body parts). Call me easily amused, but hearing Judge Alex say “rims” just made me giggle. A lot. Like I said. Easily amused.

    

On Tuesday, two of my favourite shows, Suits and Covert Affairs return to the USA Network. Now, here’s my dilemma: do I watch them live on the night because I would not be able to bear waiting (nor everyone telling me on Twitter what has happened before I have seen them), or do I wait a few weeks for a dressing down day when I can watch non-stop (and, in the meantime, totally avoid Twitter)?

    

At least if I opt for the latter, I will avoid the American ads, which are many. I always lose weight when in the States because these ads make me feel so ill with their surfeit of food – all of it orange. Orange prawns, orange chicken, orange bread – no amount of colour adjustment on my set transforms these disgusting beds of fat into anything other than a floating sea of orange cholesterol.

    

I imagine that men are as put off sex as I am food, with ads that put the fear of God into you with the products’ side effects.

    

You can get your sex drive back, but be warned: this product may cause sweating, palpitations, liver damage, kidney damage, headaches, nausea, brain tumours, blood clots. Then there’s the dastardly warning; please see your doctor if you have an erection lasting longer than eight hours. I imagine after hearing about the possible side effects, you’d be lucky to get one at all.

    

The box set saves you from the side effects of consuming too many commercials, and if you download them, they also save you from having your shelves cluttered up with these monstrous cardboard bricks.

    

Practically the whole of my life runs through the computer now. I have systems that enable me to watch UK TV in the US and vice versa. My laptop is plugged into my TV so I can run everything through my 50 inch screen. I suspect that in a few generations, nobody will have legs, as humans will have lost their need ever to use them.

    

But as it’s Sunday and there’s not much on the TV, I’m going to do something revolutionary and take a hike up Runyon Canyon. I may take my iPad with me, just in case I get withdrawal symptoms and need to watch repeats of The Americans when I’m there.

    

Then it’ll be back home for supper and taking my dressing gown out of the wash ready to start another TV viewing week.

Tomorrow, on Judge Alex, the defendant Richard says he took his Bengal cat to Kismet for breeding and to sell Bengal kittens, but was devastated when Kismet told him his kittens had died. 

Oh, please say pussy, Judge Alex. Just for me. 

Tattoos, Simon Cowell and Having my Day in Court with Judge Alex

The first time I was in a courtroom was as a witness for the police in the UK, when they had decided my complaint against a taxi driver warranted a case for "rude and aggressive behaviour".

The Appeals Court (he didn't turn up for the first trial - ok, a tad melodramatic, I admit) put the problem down to there not being "enough charisma" between us. How much charisma do you need to go from Wardour Street to Brewer Street (less than a mile) behind a pane of glass, I asked the dumbfounded police afterwards.

The second time was in LA in 2011, when I successfully sued my landlady for non-return of a huge chunk of my deposit. Everything I put into practice I learned from watching just one TV show: Judge Alex (follow @judgealexferrer on Twitter). And so, today, I found myself in court for the third time: not in the handcuffs (alas) I fantasised about when I first saw the TV show, and not, thankfully, with my being sued for being his stalker.

I was there as a member of the audience, and not since I saw Simon Cowell's enormous Winnebago (no, that is not a euphemism) on the set of American Idol a few years back, have I been so excited.

In fact, so excited have I been about knowing both men, I nearly got their names tattooed - one on each shoulder - when I was in Venice Beach a few weeks back.

Alcohol had been consumed. Sobriety had been resumed when I settled for an engraved ingot with WWSD (What Would Simon Do) on it (sorry, Judge, even semi-stalkers have their pecking order).

So, here I am on the set and I am asked where I would like to sit - on or off camera. Anyone who knows me would know they could have just plonked me on the Judge's bench at the outset and downgraded me from there.

In fact, anyone who knows me will be surprised to learn that I was not fully robed, gavel in hand, shouting "Action!" with the poor Judge locked in a cupboard elsewhere on the studio lot.

So, I am seated second from the left in the front row, and the first person to talk to me is an actor. So is the second. And the third. And the . . . You get my drift. They join lists that provide audiences for studio shows such as Judge Alex and get paid by the day. I suggest a sum and am told that yes, I am fairly accurate for days like this. When I arrive, the team is already on show five, and there are three more to go. They record 130 shows in a little over three months and the five blocks of three day taping are clearly the most intense.

"They get paid more than we do," says RAN 1 (the Resentful Actor Number 1 on my left, who has been to every show today), nodding towards the hallowed ground beyond the wooden barrier where he is penned. "When I was a litigator . . . " he begins. I decide not to point out that he has never been, will never be, a litigator. I also hesitate to point out that he will never be an actor, either, but hold my tongue. (When I returned to see my second show, he was shunted off to "Standing room". Quite right).

Behind me sits RAN 2. She's a nurse. Not a real one, of course. She has been a "background actor" in several hospital dramas, but is ready to move centre stage.

"Do a monologue - NOW!" shouts RAN 1, a little frighteningly. She stumbles. I think of reciting Henry V's speech from the Battle of Agincourt, but in the millisecond I take for breath, RAN 1 is already off. "I'm a Shakespearean actor really . . . "

There is a very handsome younger man behind him who has played a detective (albeit a "background detective"). He has the kind of look that gives me the feeling that he might just make it, and he comes to these shows to network. He claims they have been very useful.

Oh, Hollywood, I love you. The hope.

The tension is building and the courtroom bailiff Mason is on the set. Very cute. Great smile. Great presence. And his gun is in my eye line. I don't known what it is about men in uniforms and outfits, but take Judge Alex Ferrer . . . Ex-pilot, cop, judge - oh, your honour, please avoid the medical profession; a white coat might prove the final, fatal straw. Even as I write that sentence, I am fantasising about your stethoscope.

The studio, on Bronson in Hollywood, is all very relaxed ("Remember my name!" whispers RAN 1) until the announcement of "The Honorable (US spelling!) Judge Alex Ferrer", which, unlike when you watch on TV, has a slight air of "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host. . ." about it.

Then he's there. And everything changes. It's like the Second Coming, albeit one a lot more clean-shaven than the first. The cliches of tall, dark and handsome are even more apparent under the studio lights, and from my seat I get a great view.

At least, I did, until the second case, when a very wide defendant blocked my view of Judge Alex completely. Talk about a total eclipse of the Son (geddit? Oh, go back few sentences). I so wanted her to lose. She did.

The third case even had a star guest in singer Freda Payne (most famous for the 1970 hit Band of Gold), which was very exciting. I thought the Judge got a little too overwhelmed at her presence, but by then I was backstage with the producers and out of striking distance of my love rival.

The producers were loving it. I've seen a lot of shows and know a lot of crews and I have never seen one as united and enjoying their work as this one. They laughed, they shared comments, they even clapped when the audience clapped. And they cared. They absolutely cared.

"I really hope she wins," said one, turning to his co-workers. And I could tell he wanted her to. It's drama, after all, and we care about the ending (she did, by the way, and the cheering backstage was heartfelt).

The cases come from all over the US, and Judge Alex (unlike other TV courtroom judges) conducts considerable research into each state's individual laws. With stringers in around 25 states trawling court records, the team also has to weed out people just looking for a free trip to Hollywood. At the studio, the rest room door jammed my finger twice. I told Supervising Producer James that I might sue. He jokingly suggested I could be a case on the final run of taping; even be "the last show".

Oh, James, you really don't know me, do you? I am already shopping for my outfit.

It is not just the research or the good looks (did I mention those?) that make this show easily the best of the US courtroom reality shows - and one of the best shows on TV. The Judge's intelligence, charisma and brilliant lateral thinking are second to none. It comes across on TV, but even more so in the studio where, of the 40 or so minutes taped, by the time you add promos, ads, et al, roughly just 14 will make it to screen. And, having seen the live show, I cannot heap enough praise on the seamless, incredible job they do in the editing suite.

Judge Alex doesn't so much listen to the evidence, it's as if he's breathing it in, and you can see from the initial slight smile, the information being gathered, formulated, and finally delivered in one-liners that are as funny as those from any comedian. I swear I have never laughed aloud so much at anyone on TV. Ever.

And this from a woman who has been watching and reviewing the genre for about 90 hours a week for three decades.

Judge Alex's years as a cop, lawyer and judge seem to be embedded in his DNA and, having had some of the worst criminals before him (the forthcoming movie Pain and Gain is based on one of his most famous cases - the Judge was asked to appear in it but would not renege on a school engagement to which he was already committed), he has seen the lot.

Now, he's clearly having fun, but his ability to combine the minutiae of law with such immense humour is truly breathtaking - as is his incredible energy in being able to perform so eloquently and brilliantly for so many hours under those lights.

And then there are those hands: long, elegant fingers that seem to massage the arguments as the Judge declares “Here’s where we’re at”, before delivering his verdict. Alex Scissorhands.

You'll be hearing more about the show and the Judge when I post the interview I conducted recently with him in Miami, but just in case you're hoping for that Jane Eyre happy ending, I'll put you out of your misery now.

Reader, I didn't marry him.