Dysfunction Fits in ‘Philly’

How messed up is the legal system according to ABC’s new Steven Bochco drama, “Philly”?

Try this: In tonight’s premiere, an attorney bares her breasts during trial, two women have a screaming fistfight in a courthouse bathroom, a lawyer and assistant D.A. plea-bargain while carnally involved on a table and judges are off the wall. One tries cases with her Pomeranian dog at her side, another takes personal calls on his cell phone during proceedings.

Maybe it’s just Philadelphia.

In another jolt of bracing reality, though, protagonist Kathleen Maguire (Kim Delaney) is the fastest study in the history of jurisprudence. Barely a year out of law school, she’s already a high-powered blur, blowing in and out of courtrooms like an ambulance chaser and making savvy deals on the run in a dysfunctioning legal milieu that dispenses justice on the fly.

Capably played by Delaney (who won an Emmy for her work on Bochco’s “NYPD Blue”), Maguire is an attraction all by herself. She’s bright, tough and compassionate despite having a smart mouth, her most appealing trait being her fallibility. She doesn’t always make good choices.

Her clients are the dredges of society in a teeming jungle of lowlifes and lawyers with shiny suits that would grind up your average green attorney. But Maguire is anything but average, and tonight’s breathless “Philly” anything but credible.

Nonetheless, its protagonist has the raw energy to pin you to the screen initially, as she shoulders her ailing partner’s caseload and takes on a new partner in a young public defender (Tom Everett Scott) who is ethically challenged. Meanwhile, a complex murder case comes her way.

None of this is very distinguished. Yet here’s the carrot: Next week’s new, improved second “Philly” is quite good, giving Maguire quality time with her loving but resentful fifth-grader son and interesting combat time with her ex-husband (Kyle Secor), an assistant D.A. with political ambitions. Their mutual antipathy exposes flaws in each of them.

All here is not serious. Proving wild sometimes works, one hilarious highlight next week has a dog urinating in court on a lawyer who is suffering a heart attack, a first even for a Bochco show.

*

“Philly” premieres tonight at 10 on ABC. The network has rated it TV-14-LSV (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for coarse language, sexual content and violence).