It’s interesting to see how Dick Wolf handles real crime stories, having made a very nice living vis a vis his “ripped-from-the-headlines” “Law & Order” franchise.
After watching TNT’s upcoming series, “Cold Justice” — premiering Sept. 3 — it looks like he’s done nicely, thank you very much.
Wolf is the executive producer of “Cold Justice,” TNT’s first foray into the reality genre. His fingerprints are all over the show, in which two women — an ex-Texas prosecutor (Kelly Siegler) who went 68-0 in murder convictions, and a former Las Vegas CSI (Yolanda McClary) who worked more than 7,000 cases — traverse the country, re-opening unsolved murder cases (of which there are over 200,000 still on the books).
In the opener, they travel to the small town of Cuero, Texas. There, local law enforcement officials need Siegler and McClary’s help in re-opening an 11-year-old case — trying to prove that a sleazebag named Ronnie Hendrick killed his live-in girlfriend, Pam Shelly, by shooting her in the head, point-blank, in front of her kids.
He claims it was suicide, and was never arrested or charged in her death.
Siegler and McClary — who are all business — and don’t play to the cameras in a “please make me a TV star” sort of way — ask for all the evidence and, with veteran homicide detective Johnny Bonds, travel to the crime scene and stage a re-enactment, aided by Pam Shelly’s now-23-year-old daughter, Kayla. She witnessed the shooting back in 2001 and always insisted Hendrick killed her mom in cold blood after they argued (which they did frequently, she says).
The case isn’t as cut-and-dried as you might think — “DNA is not always the answer in a cold case. In reality it’s always about circumstantial evidence,” Siegler says — and that gives “Cold Justice” a cinema verite-type of feel, with the Hendrick/Shelly case’s ultimate outcome in question.
The hour-long series moves briskly enough, and Siegler and McClary obviously know their stuff. At least early on, they seem to have good chemistry (for what’s shown on the TV screen) and they both obviously empathize with Kayla.
The lack of cheesy re-enactments is a plus here — as is a jailhouse interview with Hendrick (who’s been locked up for a separate crime).
Check this one out.