Entertainment Weekly - February 24 - March 3, 2017

Another Crown EW’s sister publicationPeople and

ABC will air a docuseries on Princess Diana in August.•

Carringtons 2.0 Elizabeth Gillies will star on The CW’s

reboot ofDynasty from the creators ofGossip Girl.

LOGLINES

Alfred Molina as

ROBERT ALDRICH

Stanley Tucci as

JACK WARNER

Catherine Zeta-Jones as

OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND

Sarah Paulson as

GERALDINE PAGE

Kathy Bates as

JOAN BLONDELL

Kiernan Shipka as

DAVIS’ DAUGHTER B.D.

FEUD’S KEY

PLAYERS

A look at the real Holly-

wood figures and their

onscreen counterparts

The Good Fight

DATE Debuts Feb. 19 | TIME 8 p.m.

NETWORK CBS and CBS All Access

REVIEW BY Jeff Jensen@EWDocJensen

YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOWTHE GOOD WIFE

to enjoy its spin-off,The Good Fight, but you do

need plastic. Created by the original series’

Michelle and Robert King with Phil Alden Robinson

(Field of Dreams), the new show is the first offering of

CBS All Access (the premiere will also air on CBS). It’s a

$5.99-a-month streaming service programmed with

cable-TV adultness that finally answers the question

“What wouldThe Good Wife have been like with F-bombs

but without Julianna Margulies?” Answer: Pretty good!

Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart takes center stage

here. We find the proud lawyer prepping for retirement

when she loses everything in an investment scam alleg-

edly hatched by friends and clients Henry and Lenore

Rindell (Paul Guilfoyle and Bernadette Peters). She finds

new employment—and new moral focus—working for a

firm run by Adrian Boseman (Delroy Lindo), charismatic,

progressive, pragmatic. She’s not the only one starting

over. Diane brings the Rindells’ attorney daughter, Maia

(Rose Leslie), an eager newb whose family name goes

from asset to albatross overnight. Boseman also employs

Alicia’s former partner, Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo).

What broke them up? Mystery.

The storytelling lacks some of the scope and walk-and-

talk drive ofThe Good Wife, but everything else—writing,

acting, vision—is smart and strong. What captures your

imagination is the resonant premise of women trying to

pick themselves, and each other, up again after gutting

falls. The premiere opens with a shot of Diane looking

demoralized as she watches Donald Trump’s inaugura-

tion; it closes with her bucking up Maia’s spirits with the

line “It’s not over yet.” I’m with her. You’ll want to be too.

Make the investment:The Good Fightis premium legal-

drama pop for our “She Persists” moment.B+

 Christine Baranski

abusive caretaker, would be played by Davis,

Crawford’s longtime professional nemesis.

In the ’40s, studio chief Jack Warner (Stanley

Tucci) pitted the two women against each

other, in large part to break the uncompro-

mising, independent Davis. Crawford thinks

their storied animosity would be good

for publicity. But it also electrifies their

onscreen rapport, and Warner—struck by

Davis’ over-the-top characterization (which

Fe u d suggests was something of a subversive

caricature of Crawford)—orders Aldrich to

amp it further by stoking their competitive-

ness and insecurities, human cost be damned.

The season’s first half imagines the trou-

bled production of the 1962 hitWhat Ever

Happened to Baby Jane? and crescendos with

an Oscar season that saw Crawford try to

sabotage Davis’ Best Actress nod. Murphy and

his writers milk the unhappy history for juicy

melodrama, but there’s enough empathy

and reserve in the filmmaking to mitigate

exploitation. The writing—through tart, thin,

explainy turns—frames the story in the con-

text of an institutionally sexist Hollywood

that breeds Darwinian conflict, warps women

into grotesques, and denies them power.

Davis and Crawford weren’t full of hate,

but full of pain. The subtext of almost every

moment is Davis’ haunting line from the film:

“All this time, we could have been friends?”

In its hurry to get toBaby Jane,Fe u d takes

our familiarity with the stars and the value of

the camp horror classic for granted. Still, the

great cast is hilarious and humanizing, and

the two stars grip and hold you. Lange illu-

minates the vulnerabilities and hustles of a

love-starved woman terrified of showing

weakness. Sarandon nails Davis’ stare and

edge, her blazing intelligence and innate

loneliness. I could watch them feud forever,

MOLINA: AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC; ALDRICH, WARNER: PHOTOFEST; TUCCI: BARCROFT MEDIA/ GETTY IMAGES; ZETA-JONES, PAULSON: Jeven as their tragedy exhorts us not to.B

ASON LAVERIS/

FILMMAGIC; DE HAVILLAND: SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; PAGE: GETTY IMAGES; BATES: PATRICK MCMULLAN/GETTY IMAGES; BLOND

ELL: PRINT

COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES; SHIPKA: MIKE MARSLAND/WIREIMAGE; DAVIS: GAMMA-KEYSTONEETTY IMAGES;

THE GOOD FIGHT

: PATRICK HARBRON/CBS