Boston Legal is the unsung hero of US television

Verisimilitude. Not a word that trips lightly off the tongue. Nor should it, I feel, when it refers to the outdated, overrated and usually ill-fated concept of art resembling life. This old chestnut, well-seasoned and battered from two hundred years of active service, came out the other day when a friend told me that they didn't like Boston Legal on the grounds that it wasn't true to life. Art, I replied pompously, is what we lack in life. A smack in the face is what you currently lack, was my friend's riposte, ever on hand to police unwarranted pretension.