Should You Watch or Pass?

Justice On Trial, hosted by Judge Judy Sheindlin, features a series of reenactments from real-life trials. Although these reenactments don’t follow the original verbatim, the verdicts and outcomes remain consistent with the actual cases. The aim of these reenactments is to highlight cases where the final verdict seemed unjust, even though it adhered to the legal system.

Opening Shot: “December 11, 1987.” A boy descends from his school bus, and upon collapsing at the bottom of the stairs, a teacher observes cuts and bruises on his face.

The Gist: Within the series, Sheindlin oversees the trial reenactments on her Judy Justice set. Judges from her other Prime series, Tribunal Justice — Tanya Acker, Patricia DiMango, and Adam Levy — conduct the appellate phase from the set of their series. Real lawyers Daniel Mentzer and Larry Bakman argue the cases, with key events being reenacted throughout.

The first case that is examined is one that Sheindlin presided over herself when she was a family court judge in Manhattan. In that 1987 case, Terrence Karamba (Jai Carter) was removed from his home by Child Protective Services after he told his teacher and school nurse that his father Floyd (Daryl C. Brown) tied his hands up and beat him repeatedly, causing injuries to his face, wrists and back. The problem was that Floyd Karamba was an attache for the government of Zimbabwe and claimed diplomatic immunity.

The hearing that Sheindlin presided over back then, and what’s recreated in the episode, is the state of New York petitioning her to keep Terrence Karamba in foster care to keep him out of harm’s way, instead of doing what the State Department felt compelled to do, which was return Terrence back to his family’s custody. The state also wanted the State Department to go to the government of Zimbabwe and ask for Floyd Karamba’s immunity to be waived, so he could stand trial for his abuse and his son can be protected.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of?: A really cheesy version of the trial portion of Law & Order and its spinoffs.

Our Take: A whole bunch of bad choices were made during the conception of Justice On Trial. First was the use of reenactments outside the parameters of the trial. The idea behind those is to show key events that happened that would illustrate the major points of the hearing or trial being reenacted in Judge Judy’s courtroom. The problem is that the reenactments are scripted and acted in such an over-the-top style that it’s a tonal conflict with the actual trial reenactment, which seemed mostly unscripted and a lot calmer in tone.

In the episode about the Karamba case, we see Terrence Karamba tied up by his hands, hanging from a beam in the basement of his house, being beaten and whipped by his father while his mother and sister watched. The idea is that Floyd Karamba insisted to his son’s guidance counselor and school nurse that this was how discipline is meted out in Zimbabwe, but given that we’ve seen Terrence’s wounds already, the scene where he’s whipped feels unnecessary, like it comes out of a bad movie on basic cable rather than a show reenacting a trial.

The second bad choice was to have segments where Sheindlin read off a teleprompter to explain certain aspects of the case. While she’s always fascinating to watch her be off-the-cuff bombastic as she presides over the cases on both Judge Judy and Judy Justice, she is stiff and slow while reading scripted narration. And we don’t really see any of her signature bobast as she presides over the reenactment, because that’s not what judges in real court cases do. The bombast is left for Mentzer and Bakman, who do a pretty solid job of litigating these trials as if they were doing it themselves back in the day.

The final mistake was to set the reenactments on the sets of Judy Justice and Tribunal Justice. It makes the reenactments look like the small-claims cases both shows mediate, instead of consequential trial and appellate decisions, and makes it seem like these reenactments were slapped together on the lunch break from both shows.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “Sometimes the rule of law, when you factor in common sense, just doesn’t equal justice,’ Sheindlin says at the end of her narration.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Mentzer and Bakman, who gave it their all as they litigated the case. Mentzer was especially passionate, and we don’t think that passion was directed or scripted.

Most Pilot-y Line: See above about the scene where we see Terrence being beaten by his father; it’s just unnecessary.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Justice On Trial is an interesting idea but so poorly executed, it’s becomes really hard to watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.