Presumed Innocent
Apple TV+; eps 1 and 2 on June 12, then weekly
★★★★
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Back in 1987, Scott Turow’s novel Presumed Innocent sparked a Hollywood bidding war that eventually saw Sydney Pollack pay $US1 million for the screen rights. That was before the book had even been published (adjusted for inflation, that equates to about $US2.8 million today – or $4.2 million). A month later, the paperback rights were sold for $US3 million.
The film was a smash. Released in 1990 with Harrison Ford starring as the lawyer accused of murdering a colleague with whom he’d had an affair, it made around 10 times its budget at the box office.
Jake Gyllenhaal as Rusty Sabich in the TV series Presumed Innocent.Credit: Apple TV+
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Three-and-a-bit decades on, Apple TV+ has rebooted, remade and retooled the story for a modern age as an eight-part series. Now Jake Gyllenhaal plays Rusty Sabich, a smug, arrogant, hugely talented prosecution lawyer in the Chicago district attorney’s office who suddenly finds himself on the receiving end of every bit of intimidating legalistic gameplay he’s ever deployed. It’s nasty. But then, maybe he is too.
Taylor Swift fans will love this. Gyllenhaal is one of the pop star’s former lovers, more vilified than many for his supposedly callous treatment of her. The sight of him squirming in virtually every frame will be sweet revenge indeed for Swifties, even if it’s only a character, not the man himself, who’s being done slowly.
Adapted by Ally McBeal and Boston Legal creator David E. Kelley, who has become a master teller of tales about privilege upended by bad behaviour (Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers), this version deviates from both the film and the novel in ways that are both significant and welcome.
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The character of Carolyn Polhemus (played by Norwegian actor Renate Reinsve) is less problematic here than in the movie or the novel. Credit: Apple TV+
For a start, while the murdered woman, Carolyn Polhemus (Norwegian actor Renate Reinsve, star of indie film The Worst Person in the World), still largely exists only in the minds and memories of others, she is a more sympathetic creature than the ladder-climbing lawyer of the film. She may have jilted Rusty, but there’s not even a hint of the slut-shaming that tarnished the earlier takes.
The increased running time also allows for a much greater exploration of the impacts of both the affair and the investigation and subsequent court case on the marriage. As Rusty’s wife Barbara, Ruth Negga has plenty to play with: stoicism, grief, shock at the incremental revelations of his betrayals, a desire to even the score that sees her contemplating an affair of her own.
