Bull is a legal drama that premiered in 2016 starring Michael Weatherly (of NCIS and Dark Angel). Weatherly stars as Dr. Jason Bull, a psychologist who owns a trial analysis company (called Trial Analysis Corp, or TAC) that acts as a jury consultant company and also provides defense counsel to both wealthy defendants and pro-bono clients. The premise of the show is that Bull can select the best jurors to get a verdict for their client, conducts mock trials to figure out how potential jurors will react to the case, and once a jury is seated, uses mirror jurors (people with similar traits to the real jurors) who watch the trial to see how the real jurors are reacting. The show is loosely based on the early career of Dr. Phil (who is a producer on the show) when he did jury consulting work.
The show is basically a case-of-the-week procedural drama, with any serial arcs mostly focused on the personal lives, or lack thereof, of the main characters. The rest of the main cast includes Freddy Rodriguez as Benny Colon, the in-house lawyer for TAC, Geneva Carr as Marissa Morgan, Bull's second-in-command, who is also a psychologist and basically runs the team from TAC while the trial is going on, Christopher Jackson as Chunk Palmer, a fashion stylist who works with the clients to prepare them for court, Jamie Lee Kirchner as Danny James, TAC's lead investigator and a former NYPD detective, and as Cable, TAC's computer expert. The main recurring characters in season 1 are Yara Martinez who plays Isabella Colon, who is Benny's sister and Bull's ex-wife, Jill Flint who plays Diana Lindsay, an adversary and love interest for Bull, and Eliza Dushku, who had a very controversial behind-the-scenes experience on the show.
For those who get the DVD set, there are a handful of extras including a gag reel, deleted and extended scenes, the CBS launch promos that aired before the show premiered, and a behind-the-scenes featurette on season 1. Not a ton of bonus features, but they are there if you want to watch them.
The show is very good and very entertaining. They actually manage to get quite a bit of the law correct, but as in all legal dramas, the courtroom scenes are highly dramatized, and much more entertaining than what happens in real life. Also, the time frame is very compressed, with each case being resolved in a matter of weeks from the time the crime is committed. The big controversy of the season involved Dushku, who asserted that Michael Weatherly sexually harassed her on the set, which ultimately resulted in her leaving the show after her three-episode arc and not being brought back for the second season, which was originally the plan. Weatherly acknowledged he made comments to her that he intended as jokes, but was not aware she was offended until much later, after which he apologized. Whatever the situation was, Dushku's character was a great addition to the show and the fact that her arc abruptly ended when she was clearly being set up for a larger role sucks. That may color whether you want to watch the show, but as far as what was on-screen, it is a good drama that is definitely not a carbon copy of any other legal drama.
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