Lockdown, Lowdown… Ringside Report Looks Back at the TV Show Goliath

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

When television was finally getting some of the creative credit it deserves for having the ability to allow characters to grow and develop, there were gems of small screen genius, involving big hitting actors that came across to us in TV land from films.

Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton was one of them. Over 4 seasons and 32 episodes, Thornton played a highly flawed lawyer taking on the big guns in a David v Goliath theme which worked for the entire four seasons. It made the title obvious and portrayed US big business in a fairly shadowy light. It was also an Amazon production, marking for some of us, the addition and arrival of a powerful player in the market.

It was also notable because each series had only 8 episodes. American series tended to have longer runs and perhaps this meant that Thornton and his costars could commit to the TV but not be held into contracts that might affect more lucrative film offers. On top of that, given it was produced by a streaming service, it was downloadable in one go – making it a binge perfect Saturday to Sunday 8 hours viewing…

The premise was relatively simple. Billy McBride, played by Thornton wanted redemption. He wants justice for the little people and does not want to do just anything to get it. He wants to be back in touch with his ethics. McBride had built a hugely successful law firm with his partner, Donald Cooperman but, after he got a murder suspect off on a technicality, he slid into alcoholism, because that suspect went on to kill an entire family.

Now out the firm and dealing with his guilt he picks up a number of waifs and strays along his way on his redemptive road. At the beginning of the series, he is still wallowing and struggling but is surrounded by a number of people who care.

Legal assistant and former sex worker, Brittany Gold, played by Tania Raymonde, is principal amongst them though McBride’s relationship with his former partner, Cooperman played by another big hitter in William Hurt dominates the beginning of his first season. Alongside his former partner and wife, Michelle McBride, played by Maria Bello, who is struggling with her relationship with McBride, a brilliant lawyer and lousy husband there is also Denise McBride, played by Diana Hopper, their daughter.

As he manages his way through each season he is helped by Marva Jefferson, played by Julie Brister another legal assistant and Patty Solis-Papagian, another lawyer involved in real estate and DUIs, played by Nina Ariande who brings him his first case. To a bar. Where he is still drinking.

The case which Solis-Papagian brings is a tasty fight. To set himself off on his road from purgatory, his first contest is against his old legal firm – the Goliath. It is a case of exploding boats and over 8 episodes, McBride shows his keen legal mind when sober, leading to a multimillion-dollar settlement, indictment for a large corporation for illegal dumping and his old associate ending up with a stroke. In amongst it all was a hitman out to kill McBride and you could not keep your eyes off it.

And so, it continued for the next three seasons – McBride was your go to guy to beat the big guns. In season two it was politics and involved McBride being kidnapped. In season three it was big farming and it ended with quite a finessed resolution to the whole thing. In season 4, the final season was about the opioid industry.

From over here, it looked like the little people had found a true champion in Thornton. And he was not even first choice for McBride, that had reportedly been Kevin Costner! It would have certainly been a different look as Thornton had that right amount of world-weary charm to make this work.

You needed to feel his inability to comprehend but understand why the world worked the way it did. Thornton was perfect. That he was using imperfect people to support him with a fractured and confused relationship with what family he had, may have been close to the crime playbook cliché, but it was well enough nuanced to work as an original piece of work. McBride may have constantly been surprised by things, but we were not surprised by the quality of it all.

It was also a smart move by Thornton and got him a Golden Globe.

Though the final season was announced as such, it was so good, that you hoped that someone somewhere could catch back up with McBride and convince him to return for another few outings… could you imagine Thornton as McBride taking on a former President who was corrupt…

Talk about a zeitgeist moment…

British television is a curious affair. Begun through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) it is funded through the universal license fee. In essence, if you wanted to watch the television, you had to pay the license fee. The BBC got it all and is state run, albeit at arms-length. Then came along commercial television in the form of the Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. Designed to bring a bit of competition to the BBC, it was paid for through advertising but still free to air… well they didn’t add another license fee to it. By the time that I was born, 1965, there was BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. And that was it. It was still years before Bruce Springsteen would moan that there were 55 channels and nothing on but here in the UK, we kept this going until in 1982, we added a fourth channel and in 1997, a fifth. With sparkling imagination, they were called Channel Four and ehm Channel Five… In between came Sky and we understood what Springsteen meant. And so, my childhood and leading up to early adulthood we had three options… But the programs made were exceptionally good. And so, here is some critical nostalgia as the lockdown has brought a plethora of reruns, new formats and platforms and old classics trying to make their way back into our consciousness as broadcasters flood their schedules with classics… or are they classics at all? Let me take you through an armchair critics’ view of what we have to see, to find out… Welcome to the Lockdown Lowdown…