Action-packed legal drama lacks vital factor

The repo men have taken the couch, the secretary's pay cheque has bounced, he's feeling guilty for kissing his co-worker and it looks as though he will have to fire a guy he hired just seven episodes ago.

Who the hell would be David Silesi?

Jay Laga'aia's head legal honcho on Street Legal (TV2, 9.30pm) really is up to his neck in it but, then, isn't he always?

Last week's fourth-season premiere marked the 40th episode of this home-grown drama and further underlined what a busy little show it is.

Plots, subplots, sub-subplots ... this show's packed to the gunnels with storylines.

Which, of course, makes Street Legal entertaining enough in an action-packed action show kind of way.

It's just that in most legal dramas made for television - think The Practice and Murder One - much of the drama, as you'd expect, takes place in a courtroom.

Week by week central stories are built - between the romance and other minor sub-plotting - around a new client and a new case going to court.

With Street Legal, it's different. The central driver for the action is the weekly contest between the lawyers and the cops - usually between Silesi and his bete noir Kees Van Dam in a sort of macho rush to be right before the other.

It's an interesting storytelling technique. It allows for plenty of crowd-pleasing activity for key characters, plenty of fights, chases and plenty of rubber-burning for Silesi's trademark 1944 Ford jailbar truck.

But it also makes Street Legal more like an old-style cop show than a legal drama. And that might be fine for a while, but the show is still missing, after 40 episodes, a key ingredient for top drama: the ability to tell really good intricate stories.

It is still missing a heart of complex ideas that make top American dramas like The West Wing such meaty, satisfying watches.

Another problem for Street Legal is that some of the dialogue can make you cringe.

Last week Maddy (Silesi's old law-school love) turned up at David's office to put him on the spot about their relationship.

Here's what Maddy said: "I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you actually say that my acting for a client you disapproved of has destroyed our relationship."

Well, of course this wasn't it at all.

"Maddy," our David explained, as if to a moron, "Sadie [Van Dam's sidekick] was killed by your client, Peter was killed by your client, your client was trying to kill me."

Now for viewers who needed reminding of what page the show was on or perhaps hadn't seen those episodes, this exchange was no doubt useful.

But really, such ham-fisted, expository dialogue in a drama that is now 40 episodes old is a bit hard to take if it makes you feel like you're watching a show that's so busy it needs to have its characters explain what's going on in case you missed it in the rush of plotting.

Poor David. Yes, the repo men have taken the couch, the secretary's cheque bounced, he's feeling guilty about that pash and it looks as though he's going to have to fire a guy he hired just seven episodes ago - but these aren't his real dilemmas.

His more pressing problem is a Street Legal problem: putting some real dramatic meat on its action-driven bones.