By Steven G. Mehta

Finally, a t.v. drama about mediators.  Up until now, most mediators have had to resign themselves to the fact that the most famous t.v. or movie mediation was the opening scene in Wedding Crashers.  Now, U.S.A. network has a new show called Fairly Legal.

Here is an excerpt of the review from the San Francisco Chronicle:

On Thursday night, instead of unveiling yet another law-and-order drama, USA offers up “Fairly Legal,” a series focused on a legal mediator, Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi), who works at her late father’s law partnership, run by his young and controlling widow, Lauren Reed (Virginia Williams).

One challenge for Michael Sardo, creator of “Fairly Legal, ” is that mediation isn’t always as sexy as, say, murder trials. In place of dead bodies and whodunits, “Fairly Legal” gives us family squabbles over barbecue recipes and custody fights over a little girl between her widowed stepfather and his late wife’s Croatian mother.

The opening episode focuses on Kate’s attempts to mediate a dispute between a tough aging businessman (Ken Howard) and his son, who was involved in a traffic altercation that resulted in gun charges being filed against two young African American men. The son has his own reasons for resisting Kate’s attempts to reopen the case, and you should be able to figure out why about halfway through the show.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/18/DDAR1H9VCT.DTL#ixzz1BSOXktdG