Above the Law: The Privileged and the Powerful

For those who harbor a sneaking suspicion that life isn’t fair, here comes a new program to help confirm things: “Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege and Justice.”

The documentary series, debuting at 10 tonight on Court TV, has a simple premise: There’s a justice system for the rich and famous, and one for everybody else. Each week Dunne will introduce a case involving people plucked from high society, whose arrogance apparently led them to believe they were above the law. And in some instances they turn out to be right.

Dunne, a onetime Hollywood studio executive and now an author and Vanity Fair columnist, seems a natural selection as host. He jumped into prominence for many viewers during his coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, but it was the slaying of his daughter by her boyfriend more than a decade earlier that helped push him into the role of legal pundit.

But Dunne really has very little to do here. Seated somberly at a desk on a living room set, he briefly lays out the case and then delivers several more short spiels over the next hour to keep the case’s narrative moving. But most of the heavy lifting is done via sound bites from a procession of reporters, police, lawyers and some of the principals. TV news footage and newspaper headlines (some with dates that don’t match the voice-overs) do the rest.

Tonight’s case involves the 1987 murder of an Atlanta socialite and the efforts to pin down suspect No. 1--her estranged millionaire husband.

Although it can be fascinating to jog along the twisting legal path of such cases, there’s probably a few too many switchbacks tonight. And the ending, such as it is, is the biggest twist of all.