Accused review: Fox debuts a fresh courtroom drama
The new anthology series excels at portraying people in marginalized communities, thanks to its diverse array of actors and directors

Accused, the new drama from 24 executive producers Howard Gordon and Alex Ganda and House creator David Shore, offers a fresh take—at least by American television standards—on the typical legal procedural. Based on the BBC anthology series of the same name, the Fox courtroom drama has been promoted as “a fast-paced provocative thriller,” exploring a different crime with an original cast in a different city each week. And over the first five episodes that were presented to critics for review, the show largely lives up to its billing as a promising freshman series, telling a diverse array of stories that illustrate the blurring divide between guilt and innocence in today’s world.
The first third of the season introduces a set of protagonists who, for a 42-minute episode on network TV, feel relatively well-defined: a neurosurgeon (Michael Chiklis) who suspects his teenage son may be planning to commit a violent crime; a Deaf surrogate (Stephanie Nogueras) who decides to intervene when the hearing parents of the Deaf baby she carried want to try an experimental surgical procedure; a drag queen (J. Harrison Ghee) who falls for a closeted man leading a double life, which is essentially a remake of a story in the BBC series; a father (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) who decides to retaliate against a man who sexually assaulted his 10-year-old daughter; and an aging rockstar (Keith Carradine) trying to stop his drug-addicted adult son from falling into old habits.