"Justice on Trial" (S01, 8 eps, 45-min, Prime) Judge Judy Sheindlin writes and stars in this series devoted to trial re-enactments of landmark cases. It's a fine concept but this type of content demands proper attention to its execution. The show's concept turns the design of shows like Dateline and 20/20 around, where 90% of the presentation is the crime backstory with the trial bringing up the end. Here, it's the same sequence but the weighting is reversed. Each episode features Judy as commentator and judge with the same two guys playing prosecutor and defense counsel. On her other shows you get Judy turned up to 10 but here, she's greatly toned down to a 1 or 2 so that's refreshing. The cases and their outcomes are interesting but what I find time after time that irritated me is that so much of the story is left out. For instance, the 2nd and 3rd eps concerned how a 15yo boy was absolutely steamrolled by detectives into giving a false confession yet there was absolutely no discussion of his parents' role in his mentally/emotionally abusive interrogations and polygraph. Narrative oversights like this are inexcusable. Finally, there's no jury in these re-enactments, there's no information as to how long the real jury took to return verdicts, no "where are they now", etc.
