“Scott Turow’s
Reversible Errors”
Sunday night and Tuesday night
at 9 on CBS
(three stars)
‘SCOTT Turow’s Reversi ble Errors,” which premieres Sunday night, takes us back to the good old days when miniseries were actually something to be anticipated. Something that didn’t involve real bartenders and flesh-eating tarantulas.
And “Reversible Errors” stars Tom Selleck, who not only gets better with age, but is one of the few actors who has had the good sense to pick and choose his roles instead of taking everything that comes down the pike.
The same can’t be said for one of his co-stars, William H. Macy, who is without a doubt, one of the best actors working today, but also one who turns up more often than Ryan Seacrest.
“Reversible Errors” is the (very) complicated, story about “Squirrel” Gandolph (Glenn Plummer), who is on death row after confessing to Sgt. Larry Starczek (Selleck) that he killed four people in a diner. Only problem is, Squirrel didn’t do it.
Into the mix is ex-prosecutor, now corporate attorney, Arthur Raven (Macy), who is appointed by the court to handle Squirrel’s latest appeal.
Further complicating the situation is the prosecutor on the case, Starczek’s ex-lover, Muriel Wynn (Monica Potter), who is now running for DA. She made her bones on Squirrel’s death penalty conviction.
When Raven hears that the judge in that case was Gillian Sullivan (Felicity Huffman), he decides that he might be able to stay the execution while the court looks into the case again, because Sullivan was later disbarred and jailed for bribe-taking and being drunk on the bench.
Raven goes to find the judge, now out of jail. He realizes that Sullivan is the judge who’d signed a search warrant he needed years earlier in the Squirrel murder case.
She was an alone and aloof judge in her giant house way back then. Now she’s an alone and aloof cosmetics counter lady. Being jailed doesn’t usually do much for a girl’s financial affairs.
Meantime, Starczek’s old pal, head of airport security Erno Erdai (John Rebhorn), is dying in jail, and he wants to confess to the killings. Seems that his nephew Collins Farwell (Shemar Moore), a small time travel agent, had been working a ticket-stealing scam involving an employee of Erdai’s.
Threatened that he’d be implicated, Erdai killed them both in a diner, along with the diner’s owner and a witness. (Like I said, complicated.)
The love affair as played by Huffman and Macy is so sweet and embarrassing at times that you laugh and cringe at the same time. Huffman is just great as Sullivan, and it’s refreshing to see a middle-aged woman presented as sexy and complicated instead of a lonely, bitter ex-wife.
There are only two weak links. One is Potter (who looks like the love child of Julia Roberts and Britney Spears) as the overly ambitious prosecutor/reluctant lover of Selleck.
The other is Shemar Moore’s portrayal of Erdai’s mixed-race nephew. For no reason whatsoever, this businessman speaks like a gang banger from the ‘hood. Did they think no one would know he was black unless he played into the stereotype?
