TV review
“Legal Affairs” in the first
Lavinia Wilson as an ice cold media lawyer – this series brings reality back to TV
Lavinia Wilson plays media lawyer Leo Roth in “Legal Affairs”, who tries to save her law firm with all means and tricks.
© RBB / Kerstin Jacobsen / ARD Degeto
With this series, German television has finally arrived in 2021: “Legal Affairs” tells about life in times of ubiquitous internet and social media along the lines of a media lawyer.
There has never been such a series figure on German television before: Lea Roth is ice cold, manipulative and ruthless. She shamelessly wraps other people around her finger, plays them off against each other and lets them fall when she’s tired of them.
Leo Roth (Lavinia Wilson) is a successful media lawyer in Berlin and the main character in the new series “Legal Affairs”. Her clients included movie stars, celebrities, youtubers – people who appear in the media, which creates various problems.
In the first episode, she represents the family of a driver who died in a bus accident and who is struggling with media prejudice. In another case, she has to save the transfer of a Berlin soccer professional to FC Bayern, who is threatened with bursting after media speculation about a heart defect. Other episodes are about cyberbullying, video deep fakes and shitstorms – all phenomena that are almost the order of the day in today’s media world.
“Legal Affairs” deals with closed cases
Each of the eight episodes focuses on a case, but there is also a political scandal, the processing of which runs through the entire first season and culminates in a dramatic finale. At the same time, the lawyer is struggling with financial difficulties and worries about the continued existence of her law firm. In addition, she also has to clarify private problems.
So there are a lot of topics rattling down on Lea Roth at the same time, the series is told at a breathtaking pace. Lavinia Wilson leads the magnificent acting ensemble, Maryam Zaree, Niels Bormann, Aaron Altaras and Michaela Caspar shine as her team of lawyers. In addition, numerous real celebrities have short cameo appearances, including Günther Jauch and Inka Bause.
The high level of relevance to reality and the present in this production is unusual in public television. If you look at the topics ARD and ZDF are currently launching, one thing above all stands out: Most series avoid the present. Almost all stories take place in the past. For example, the recently launched ARD six-part series “A Touch of America”, which tells of the US occupation in post-war Germany.
Back to the past with ARD and ZDF
The coming large-scale productions are also mainly dreaming of yesterday: On December 27th, the first takes viewers with “Eldorado KaDeWe – Now is our time” into the supposedly Roaring Twenties. And at the beginning of January, ZDF started the new year with the opulent multi-part series “Der Palast”, which tells of the division of Germany up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
What all stories have in common is that they actually only use the historical background as a backdrop to tell a sugar-filled love and family story. True to the motto: Instead of the political, we are only interested in the private. “Legal Affairs” is different: the series shows to what extent private life will be shaped by social and technological conditions in 2021 – and where there are problems.
The idea for the series comes from Lena Kammermeier and Felice Götze, who implemented the episodes as head authors in a writer’s room based on the American model. The figure of Leo Roth is based on the well-known media lawyer Christian Schertz, who worked as an expert and consultant on the consequences and even made a brief appearance.
At her service as a media attorney, Leo Roth also offers her support as a PR consultant. In order to build up the cracked reputation of her clients, she acts according to the motto: A good story is better than the truth. A sentence that German series producers should write behind their ears: a story does not get better just because it is told based on historical facts.
ARD will broadcast the first two episodes of “Legal Affairs” on Sunday, December 19, “starting at 9.45 pm. The other episodes will run in duplicate on December 20, 22 and 23, starting at 9.45 pm.
The complete series of “Legal Affairs” is already available in the ARD media library.