Boston Legal follows quirky but refreshing formula

Hang a cheesy slogan on the noticeboard: a man doesn't need to be nuts to work in the legal offices of Crane, Poole & Schmidt, but obviously it helps.

There's not much difference between a loony bin and the law firm at the heart of The Practice spin-off, Boston Legal (TV3, tonight, 9.30), a fact which was swiftly established in the show's busy opening sequence last week.

Alan Shore (James Spader) had only a minute to re-establish the smoothly unethical qualities he deployed so effectively in the final season of the mother show before senior partner Edwin Poole came into the Monday morning briefing naked from the waist down.

A tiny blip in another day of mayhem, madness and slick self-interest that are the chief characteristics of this new David E. Kelley show. Poole wasn't a bit fazed as the orderlies came to take him away, "Tell my wife I've had a small breakdown and not to worry." As he says, "I can be nuts and still brilliant."

Yes, we're deep in familiar Kelley territory, pitched straight into the king of the quirky legal drama's favourite mix of lunacy, outrageous litigation and lust.

Boston Legal may have descended from The Practice but it's actually much closer to Kelley's glossy, whimsical and fetishistic Ally McBeal.

The chief difference is that the women in this show seem to function merely as decorative, sane foils for the much more interesting excesses of the men. Yes, Boston Legal is a guy thing. It belongs to the blustery, preening master of the dirty trick, Denny Krane (William Shatner), and his talented apprentice, the languid and silver-tongued Shore, played by the ever-scintillating Spader. The enormous relish with which the two Emmy-winning actors milk the perversities of their characters alone carries the show.

Nearly all the characters hark back to counterparts in Ally McBeal. The lecherous older men, attractive young women using their sexuality as just another item in their skill set, and the sternly erotic female judges.

Krane is the father of the wonderfully venal and vacuous Richard Fish.

"There's nothing in my head," Krane says at one stage, and there's no reason to doubt that he's right. Yet he's still ahead of the play as he and Shore vie to shock with their outrageous antics in and out of court.

It's hard to tell yet if Boston Legal is hopelessly overcooked and going to turn out too silly for words. But the first episode at least pulled itself back from the brink with another Kelley drama trademark: an impeccable taste in guest stars.

The Rev Al Sharpton came on as himself delivering a scorcher of an address to the court which lifted an otherwise absurd case about race discrimination to another level.

Kelley has indulged his penchant for the oddball in his shows to the point where he's made his own quirkiness formulaic, but, such is the lacklustre competition from the likes of the Law & Order, C.S.I. clones, his style still comes across as refreshing.

Whether the lawyers' madness overwhelms their method to the point of idiocy remains to be seen. For now, Boston Legal is shaping up to be a bit of wicked, smart-mouthed fun.