La voix du silence

I thought that this was one of the finest shows on television. Sadly, NBC sabotaged it, as they have done with some other fine shows, by bouncing it around their schedule and not letting the audience build up. Mark Harmon and Kay Lenz had great chemistry together as a romantic couple, and the working relationship/friendship between Harmon and Matlin made for fantastic television. This show deserved far better than it got from NBC.

Great show using some of Hollywood's most underrated and/or under used talents. Mark Harmon never came off as the pretty boy he portrayed in his movies, but built on the dramatic abilities displayed in St. Elsewhere. Marlee Matlin was believable as an attorney, although towards the end of the run her character became a little too holier than thou. Kay Lenz is great in anything, and her Maggie Zombro gave her many layers to work with - she and Mark Harmon made a good team. Great inside joke was Dickie watching television when the theme song to Midnight Caller came on - which I believe was another show by the same producer.

Dicky Cobb blew the whistle on some corrupt cops in a major American city and got treated like a rat. Which city? New York, Boston, L.A.? Nope. The City of the Big Shoulders, a city where crime and corruption go hand-in-hand, drumroll please: Chicago. Dicky's reassigned to Assistant State's Attorney Tess Kaufmann. She works for State's Attorney Arthur Gold, a pisant dunderhead who grandstands for the public and panders to its every whim. Why is Cobb reassigned? The main reason is that she needs an investigator. The others are that she's deaf and he can sign.

Tess has taken on Holocaust deniers, criminals of every stripe, and her ex-husband, who makes her life a living hell every chance he gets. If you can't get enough of Marlee Matlin, you can see her in two very good movies, one is her first, Children Of A Lesser God, for which she won an Oscar, and the other's Hear No Evil with D.B. Sweeney and Martin Sheen.

I was an extra in the pilot, shot in Chicago, and had the enjoyment of working with Marlee Matlin and Mark Harmon. Mr. Harmon was very personable and professional, and even took the time to eat dinner and chat with us extras. I literally, bumped into Ms. Matlin during one of our takes, when she turned and walked into me as I crossed a hallway in a scene where I walk across the room from viewers' right to left. I would like to add that I walked very professionally, almost like I had been doing it... all of my life! I was sorry when the program was canceled, as I thought it was very well done. Chicago has some of the best architecture available to the television and movie industry today. The interiors and exteriors are without equal. Sincerely, Dave Quinn McHenry, IL