What is the plot?

Michael Desiato is an honest, noble and prestigious judge of the city of New Orleans. He has a teenage son, Adam Desiato. A year ago, the wife and mother of the family, was murdered while doing a job as a journalist, in a dangerous neighborhood of the city. Precisely on the day of the tragic anniversary, young Adam decides to go there to leave some flowers and a photograph. After getting scared by the local thugs, he quickly runs away in his car, having an accident on a lonely street. He hits a boy on a motorcycle, who dies in front of him, who does not ask for help from 911 and runs away. When he tells his father what happened, the right judge prepares him to turn himself in and find him a lawyer, but he changes his mind when he learns that the young man who died in the accident is the son of Jimmy Baxter, the head of the New Orleans mafia. Now, the right judge will have to do everything possible to save his son, while the mob boss will also do everything possible to find the culprit of the accident.

Judge Desiato is respected and has the reputation of being a noble judge who is always on the side of justice. He is a man of good character and does an excellent job. But the tragic accident, in which his son is involved, will completely change the honest life of this man. The judge will have to lie, hide and manipulate friends and the system, to prevent the truth from being discovered.

These are desperate decisions made at a time when human morality is being tested. This is the greatest test of a morally correct man. And above all there is amorality, there is the protective instinct of a father toward his child.

His son, Adam Desiato, is all he has. He is all he has left. A year ago he lost his wife, the breadwinner, in a terrible way. In a poor neighborhood store in the city, while she was doing her job, during a store robbery, he shot her. All he has left is his son, and he won't let anything bad happen to him. Protecting him, however, will be the only option for the respected judge.

The young man will live his nightmare differently, tormented by guilt, because he saw the boy on the bike die. He didn't ask for help, he escaped and threw his cell phone in the river. This feeling of guilt will become more intense with each episode, especially when a young black man is arrested and accepts the blame for the accident.

Because everything will get complicated. The judge will ask his friend in politics for help, so that the car is destroyed, and the politician, with ties to the police and a dangerous New Orleans gang, will do him the favor. What the judge's friend doesn't know is the real reason for destroying the car. The young gang member, assigned to drive the car to the place where it will be destroyed, is stopped by the police when a red light is passed.

One lie, create more lies, and now everything points to the fact that the death of the gang member's son, could be part of a revenge of the rival gang. What the judge is doing to protect his son will bring unexpected consequences for innocent people and could set the city on fire.

Jimmy Baxter, is the head of organized crime in New Orleans, he is rich, he has resources, the corrupt police work for him and he has faithful men who will investigate the accident, the most powerful and dangerous man in the city, he has only one goal, to find the person who killed his son and take justice into his own hands.

It is a story, of a just and honest man forced by the facts of fate to do bad and dishonest things.

It is also a story about pain, about loss. Both families are victims of that tragic accident. Both families have different goals, they are each on one side of the system, but in the end the lies will fall apart, the truth could come out at any time and that would be the death sentence for the judge and his son.

The first episode was very intense, because he developed the accident and everything it caused. The mini-series hooks, despite being a story that we have seen in many movies or other series, the characters are well built, the setting in New Orleans is very good and everything that is criminal drama, is something that I like.

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The creator is Peter Moffat, a British filmmaker, who wrote the scripts for the ten episodes and is in charge of the direction. Another director who accompanies him in the task is Edward Berger. Moffat is a prestigious scriptwriter and playwright, where he has worked on scripts for series and miniseries of notable success, such as Presumed Guilty, Silk, Criminal Justice, The People, Undervocer, The Last Post, and the successful HBO miniseries The Night Of, where he also immersed us in a great criminal drama and the justice system.

I really wanted to see this mini-series for one reason: Bryan Cranston. The fabulous actor that everyone knows from Breaking Bad and his Walter White/Heisenberg. Let's not lie, he's the reason so many people are going to see this mini-series.

Cranston plays judge Michael Desiato, he is the great protagonist of the story. This time, he plays an honest and fair man, who is also successful in his job, but to protect the person he loves most, he will have to do things he never imagined. He knows the judicial system perfectly, he knows all the tricks and what to do to save his son, but the lies are dangerous, they will trigger a series of events that will be impossible to stop later. Bryan Cranston offers again an extraordinary performance, just to see it, it's worth it.

On the opposite side, on the side of crime, is the fabulous actor Michael Stuhlbarg playing Jimmy Baxter. The crime boss of New Orleans, who has had his son killed. He is a ruthless man and will have no compassion or rest until he finds the real culprit. I love the actor, although in the first episodes I see his character with too many stereotypes, I hope that in the following chapters we will see more facets of the character. I recommend watching other series and movies by this actor, so you can see how great he is. For example A Serious Man by the Cohen brothers, stars this actor and I will never forget his performance as Arnold Rothstein in the series Boardwalk Empire.

Other actors in the cast are Isiah Whitlock Jr. playing Charlie, the judge's friend with ties to the world of crime. I hope they develop this character further, because he is another actor who brings back great memories, especially for his character Clay Davis in The Wire. Actress Hope Davis, who hasn't seen him in a long time, plays Gina Baxter, Jimmy's wife who wants justice for the death of her son. And Hunter Doohan, whom I haven't seen in any of his previous works, plays Adam Desiato, the young asthmatic, son of the judge, who will have the accident that sets the whole story in motion.

Trailer

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