CBS has a new drama called Guilty Party, and it wasn’t in my upfront predictions as I thought I would skip it. The premise is that a disgraced journalist is trying to rebuild her life and gets invited to a women’s prison to meet with a woman who claims to be wrongfully convicted for murdering her husband.

When I heard of it, I was like, “Meh”. I mistakenly thought it was a true crime show, not drama, and I checked out early. Instead, no, it is indeed a fictional drama along with a whole bunch of other dramas in the last few years where you have a season-long mystery. Most of them hold little attraction for me. But then I saw it was Kate Beckinsale, and I started to rethink it.

She was awesome in Underworld generally, and I liked her in Serendipity. I almost skipped The Widow, and only hung on because she was in it. But she had some gravitas as the widow wondering what happened to her husband who supposedly died in a plane crash, until she seems him on TV in the background of a current news report. The show was okay, she was great.

Sooooo, she’s in this one, and I wanted to give it a try to see how it runs. Big mistake.

She is playing a pseudo-space cadet. She won an award, she was all good, but she’s disgraced for making up stuff in her article, and almost all of her acting around it comes across like a child. There’s nothing THERE for gravitas, the only thing that held my attention in The Widow. She’s married to an okay guy but there’s little chemistry; she interacts with writing people in ridiculously destructive ways; you’re supposed to feel something for her as she’s trying to get her life back on track, but well, the inmate is right. The “opportunity” she sees isn’t about her, it’s about the woman in prison. Except, well, that actress is new, a fresh face, sure, but ZERO presence.

The various friends and family are unrelatable, not sure why I would care about any of them. In fact, in the entire story, about the only person I even remotely cared about was the guy who got killed. Until I found out he was also a gun runner and an abuser of women.

I don’t know what the story arc will look like, but nothing seemed compelling. I’ll predict cancellation, and I definitely won’t be watching.