CRANSTON PICKLE (YOUR HONOR, SEASON TWO)

Season One of Showtime's 'Your Honor' distinguished itself with its examination of the depths a father might go to protect his son.

Bryan Cranston's character Michael Desiato was a respected New Orleans judge whose asthmatic son, Hunter Doohan's Adam was inadvertently involved in a road accident while frantically searching for an inhaler dropped while driving his car.

Unfortunately for Adam, he hit a motorcyclist who came from a family of Scottish and Italian American mobsters, the Baxters.

Not only that but in a panic, he fled the scene with the dead boy's phone after trying to ring the emergency services but struggling to take a breath.

Initially intending to turn his son in to the police after learning what happened, Michael panicked when realising who the victim's family were and instead tried to cover the young man's tracks.

However in the process, the Desiatos got sucked into a messy world of New Orleans' corruption, with the judge being forced to trash the principles he held so dear.

(SPOILERS ALERT!!)

Season Two finds Michael depressed and in prison after a dramatic turn of events that saw him confess to Amy Landecker's cop Nancy Costello his central role in the cover-up of Rocco Baxter's death and his perversion of the course of justice.

Now sporting dishevelled hair and a wild beard, Michael is also reeling from Adam being accidentally gunned down by Benjamin Flores Jr's teenager Eugene Jones, who had been trying to avenge the murder of his brother Kofi in prison at the hands of Jimi Stanton's Carlo Baxter.

Judge Desiato had helped exonerate the Baxters' son by barring Eugene from testifying in Carlo's trial for Kofi's murder.

Wracked with grief, guilt and remorse, Michael refuses to eat while behind bars and has to be force fed using a nasogastric tube.

He is, however, offered respite from this grim existence by Rosie Perez's DA Olivia Redmond who has buried his confession and concocted a story that he was imprisoned for tax evasion in a bid to use him as a pawn in her plan to put Michael Stuhlbarg's Jimmy Baxter in jail.

Michael reluctantly agrees but in return he must help her expose Jimmy's criminal activities.

The situation in New Orleans that Michael finds himself returning to has, however, gotten even more complex.

For starters he's now a grandad, with the daughter of Jimmy and Hope Davis' Gina Baxter, Lilli Kay's Fia giving birth to Adam's son.

And while this provides an opening for Olivia to exploit, Jimmy's behaviour remains wildly unpredictable with Michael reluctant to get too involved.

Jimmy, meanwhile, is fixated with legitimising the family business through a massive New Orleans' waterfront development.

However he must persuade Michael's old friend, Isaiah Whitlock Jr's Charlie Figaro, who is now the city's Mayor, to back the project.

Charlie has links to a rival crime gang run by Andrenne Ward-Hammond's drug dealer Big Mo and her sidekick, Keith Machekanyanga's Trey 'Little Mo' Munroe who have been shielding Eugene Jones from the Baxters.

However his role in helping Michael get rid of Adam's car is also known by Olivia and could ignite a political scandal that will destroy him.

With Big Mo leaning on Charlie to help her secure a club opposite the Baxters' hotel, the rise of the rival African American gang and their shielding of Eugene Jones really starts to grate with Gina who berates Jimmy for getting soft and sloppy.

Bitter and still on a bloodlust after Rocco's death, Gina tasks Carlo with tracking down Eugene Jones.

She also starts to assert herself more, leaning on her family's Mafia connections and recalling her old school Mobster dad, Mark Margolis' Carmine Conti to put pressure on Jimmy to keep the family's dirty money flowing in.

With Fia increasingly uncomfortable about her family, she tries to encourage Michael to get to know his grandson better.

However she is still oblivious to the role Adam played in her brother Rocco's death and the former judge's role in the cover-up.

Michael faces ongoing hostility from Nancy Costello who hasn't quite forgiven him for breaking the law and colluding with the Baxters, even if his mother-in-law Margo Martindale's state senator Elizabeth Guthrie is prepared to forgive.

With Jimmy appearing to also be willing to put their past friction behind them because they share a grandson, the former judge also must weigh up if he really wants to take the risk of helping the DA build a case against the gangster.

Question marks start to surface too around the circumstances of the murder of Michael's late wife Robin which stirs up some awkward issues for him, Nancy and Elizabeth.

And as the Baxters try to lean on Charlie to push through their waterfront plans, tensions come to the boil in their marriage which threaten to disturb the family's criminal operation.

Big Mo faces similar problems, with members of her gang believing she has taken her eye off the ball in her bid to secure the club while they try to build her drug dealing business.

As tensions mount in Big Mo's hand Eugene gets caught in another mess that will bring Michael's former protege, Carmen Ejogo's attorney Lee Delamere back into the equation.

Disillusioned and angry at how her mentor Judge Desiato perverted the course of justice in the Carlo Baxter trial, she is determined to expose corruption in the legal system and Michael's role on it.

As he tries to re-integrate into New Orleans life, can Michael successfully navigate the old wounds and the potential pitfalls opening up as Olivia gets him to spy on Jimmy Baxter?

Will the powder keg of organised crime in New Orleans spark a savage turf war between the Baxters and Big Mo's gang?

Can Eugene avoid getting caught in the crossfire?

As you can tell from the synopsis, there's an awful lot going on in Season Two of 'Your Honor'.

Adapted from the Israeli series 'Kvodo' with the English 'Kavanagh QC' screenwriter and former barrister Peter Moffat as the US version's creator, there's a lot of narrative threads from Season One to pick up.

And like the first season, it's a pretty entertaining mix - even if the show is a bit overwhelmed at times by everything it's trying to cram in.

Big city corruption, the pain of violent loss, the desire for vengeance, tensions within organised crime gangs and cynicism about religion are just some of the tasty morsels we are asked to chew.

Season Two of 'Your Honor,' however, has difficulty at times swallowing all of these.

The show's screenwriters Joey Hartstone, Dani Vetere, Oneika Barrett, Aalia Brown, Kendall Sherwood, Dewayne Darian Jones, Bill Cain, Brandi Noble and Marcus Dalzine deliver an uneven, yet mostly entertaining season.

However a lot of the heavy lifting in 'Your Honor' is done by its superb cast who manage to keep you invested, even when the show becomes too sensational or too heavily reliant upon coincidence.

Cranston is always watchable but he's especially good at playing morally conflicted characters in a bit of a pickle.

The role of Judge Michael Desiato offers him the chance to do exactly that and he rises to the challenge easily.

Michael Stuhlbarg is very comfortable playing villains too but in Season Two, Jimmy Baxter has an added vulnerability as Gina turns against him.

Hope Davis is terrific as his angry and vengeful wife who butts heads with Andrenne Ward-Hammond's Big Mo.

Like Stuhlbarg, Ward-Hammond is given more to play with as her character's criminal empire, like Jimmy's, faces issues from within.

Lilli Kay comes more into her own as Fia, while Jimi Stanton's Carlo maintains an air of menace.

Whitlock Jr, Martindale, Landecker, Machekanyanga, Ejogo and Flores Jr all contribute.

Perez is a wonderful addition to proceedings, while the late Mark Margolis channels the same sense of threat he embodied as Hector Salamanca in 'Breaking Bad' and 'Better Call Saul'.

Mark O'Brien grabs attention as a Catholic priest who Fia confides in even though she is an atheist.

Tony Curran also relishes his return as Jimmy's right hand Scottish hard man Frankie.

Cullen Moss catches the eye too as a corrupt New Orleans cop Detective Rudy Cunningham who risks exposure.

Some narrative threads in 'Your Honor' are stronger than others - a subplot about a conspiracy involving police seems a bit convenient and rushed.

However the writers are capable of conjuring some really memorable set pieces - a scene where Jimmy publicly announces Michael shares family blood and beckons Charlie to celebrate with them is wonderfully manipulative.

Stripped of his lofty position and discredited, Michael cuts a lonely figure in the second season and you also miss some of the tension of him compromising the law to stave off violence.

However Cranston and the writers do enough to keep you invested in his messy life.

Directors Peter Sollett, Darren Grant, Carrie Preston and Rosemary Rodriguez serve up a very handsome show with the help of cinematographers Crescenzo GP Notarile, Annette Haellmigk and Michael Grady who accentuate the darkness in the lives of their corrupt characters.

If, as expected 'Your Honor', like its Israeli original, winds up after two seasons, it will have been a job reasonably well done.

Should they option a third season, there's still some narrative strands that can definitely be reactivated.

Does it merit a third outing? Possibly.

'Your Honor' isn't a home run but it gets there by hook or by crook in the end - with the emphasis on crook.

(Season Two of 'Your Honor' was made available for streaming on Paramount+ on February 3, 2023)

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CRANSTON PICKLE (YOUR HONOR, SEASON TWO)

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