Justice & Law Quote by Harry Hamlin

Hamlin’s line is a neat piece of actorly myth-making: it frames LA Law not as glossy primetime escapism, but as a civic service with good lighting. The intent is reputational as much as historical. He’s arguing that the show’s pleasure came from relevance, from the feeling that you weren’t just watching pretty lawyers flirt in elevators, you were watching America argue with itself in a courtroom.

The subtext is how television launders the chaos of “current events” into something legible. The law is a storytelling machine: it demands opposing sides, a set of rules, a climax, a verdict. In the late ’80s, when headlines were increasingly nationalized and politicized, that structure was a comfort. It let viewers metabolize controversies - workplace discrimination, corporate power, sexual politics - without the exhaust of real-life ambiguity. You could be outraged, entertained, and reassured all in the same hour, because the premise promises that messy social questions can be processed into outcomes.

Context matters: LA Law arrived after the classic courtroom procedural but before the prestige era’s antiheroes and serialized cynicism. It helped pioneer a kind of “ripped from the headlines” sensibility that would become standard, from Law & Order to The Good Wife, where the legal system doubles as a cultural commentary desk. Hamlin’s “first show” claim is debatable, but the rhetorical move is smart: it elevates a hit series into a template. It’s less about being literally first than about being the moment TV discovered it could feel current and still feel safe.