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| Entertainment Weekly September 12, 2003 The Lyon's Den In his latest TV outing, Rob Lowe plays an idealist navigating D.C. politics and philosophizing about the beauty of the law while looking damn good against a White House backdrop. But wait...didn't he leave The West Wing last season? Yes, and despite The Lyon's Den's similarities to its NBC sibling, the legal drama distinguishes itself pretty quickly. For one thing, Lowe's Jack Turner is a do-gooder lawyer who rejects politics, even though it's the family business. For another, his menacing boss, the firm's head attorney Terrence Christianson (Traffic's James Pickens Jr.), is a far cry from the cuddly liberal President Bartlett. "My stories are going to have meat every week," Lowe says. "What I was given on The West Wing was always fantastic, but it wasn't enough. Sam Seaborn was one of the great characters, but they just weren't giving him enough to do." No worries this time around. In just the pilot episode, Turner deals with his mentor's suspicious suicide - a mystery that will unravel throughout the season - while handling a political asylum case, accepting a surprise offer to become a partner, and fending off a bitter professional rival (Early Edition's Kyle Chandler). "I keep saying it's a mystery show masquerading as a legal show," says executive producer Remi Aubuchon. "[With Law & Order], Dick Wolf has done an amazing job developing a series about the legal aspects of how you prosecute a case. But I wanted to see how lawyers react to certain moralistic choices." That ethical emphasis could help The Lyon's Den fend off comparisons to other attorney shows, particularly time-slot competitor The Practice. In fact, the pilot features scant few courtroom scenes. "We're going to have really fascinating law cases, but at the heart of the show is an overarching conspiracy where you don't know whom to trust," Lowe says. "It's like All the President's Men or John Grisham's The Firm - the show owes a lot thematically to both of those." The idea began, however, as a Western. "One of the archetypal Western stories is, Here is a corrupt town and suddenly in comes the new sheriff, and he's tryng to figure out the town so he can clean it up," Aubuchon says. "That's Sheriff Jack Turner in my mind." But Aubuchon figured lawyers would sell better than cowboys, so he transplanted those principles from the frontier to the firm. Then he courted Lowe with his genre-meshing script soon after the actor decided to leave the NBC drama that resuscitated his tabloid-trashed career. "I was drawn to the sort of Don Quixote aspect of Jack Turner being one of the last men who believes that the law is full of majesty and beauty and honesty," Lowe says. "It's rare that you find a character who has the dichotomy of idealism and cynicism." Aubuchon and Lowe - who's also an exec producer - worked together to cast the supporting players, including The Life of David Gale 's Matt Craven as Turner's practical law-clinic buddy, Frequency's Elizabeth Mitchell as an alcoholic fellow attorney, and Frances Fisher as a conniving, ambitious assistant. They also snagged their first high-profile guest star: Singer-poet-actress Jewel has signed on for three episodes, playing a competitive Department of Justice attorney who matches up against Turner in an important case - and who also happens to be his former fiancee. Despite Den's high head count, Lowe is clearly the focus. "I believe less is more, and Rob is a master at that," Aubuchon explains. "We just lay it on his face, and it tells volumes. We don't need to waste a lot of time talking." Wait, no talking? This definitely isn't The West Wing. |