TV: Sexy underwear fails to help, even in law

By MICHELE HEWITSON

You might like to sing along to the theme song of Family Law. Feel free to bring your own lyrics. Because although Family Law's song is that 1970s growl, "War - what is it good for? Absolutely nothing," chanting "Men - what are they good for? Absolutely nothing," might be more appropriate.

In last week's pilot we learned that all men are good for absolutely nothing and they're are a pack of rats, to boot.

Lynn Holt (Kathleen Quinlan) had a successful law firm and a struggling marriage kept going by the injudicious use of sexy underwear and large amounts of counselling.

When her husband and partner in the firm walks out on her she faces the double whammy of betrayal: he not only scarpers with the client list, he ditches her for a woman who wears cotton undergarments.

What a fink. After all she did for him. "Do you have any idea," she wails,"what it's like to give a two-hour summation with a pair of thong underwear creeping up your arse?"

Does she have any idea how much of a doormat - even if it's a doormat decked out in a strapless silk body suit - that makes her sound?

It's hard to have a lot of sympathy for somebody who's supposed to be a high-flying lawyer but who hasn't managed to figure out the fact that the only thing wearing uncomfortable underwear is going to do for a girl is make her very bad-tempered.

Still, it was the cue for a scene where Lynn got to strip off to that silk one-piece in an empty office (the swine she was married to has not only taken the clients, he's taken the furniture) and do a spot of female bonding with her loyal colleague.

Which was, of course, the cue for their only remaining client to be shown into the office by the obligatory airhead of a secretary.

Which, in turn, was the cue for said client to be some wacko who won't settle with his estranged wife because she wants custody of the ashes of the dog he says she killed by feeding it a whole box of chocolates.

That was the kooky storyline. The heart-tugging one was the case of the junkie mother trying to get her kids back.

Which was a set-up for showing that while all men are pigs, Lynn is a woman with a social conscience: "I'm trying to figure out a way to take two kids away from good parents and give them to a junkie."

There will be plenty more of this in weeks to come. Lynn has employed an attorney who was dropped into the mix last week withthe promise that "I hate men and I play very dirty."

How dirty is this going to get? Not very, if last week was anything to go by.

When the men screw you over, you get them back by wrenching the sign off the men's toilet and replacing it with one which says "women" and by dumping a pot plant in the urinal. That should show the bastards.

* Family Law TV2, 9.30 pm