Some argue that Goliath deserves credit for refusing to repeat itself. I don’t entirely buy it.
There is nothing wrong with giving viewers more of what made them watch a programme in the first place.
Season 1 sold me a particular kind of series: a courtroom drama built around a brilliant but badly damaged lawyer. Billy McBride could drink too much, make terrible decisions and live on the margins because underneath all of that was a legal case providing structure and momentum.
I was completely sucked in. And I would quite happily have watched that basic proposition continue. Give Billy a new case, a new Goliath to take on and another difficult corner of his life to navigate. The cases could change, the characters could develop, and the stakes could grow without the programme having to abandon the genre that made it work.
Instead, each season moved further into territory I didn’t particularly enjoy.
Season 2 was darker and stranger. Season 3 disappeared deeply into dream sequences, hallucinations, fragmented timelines and surreal imagery. By then I wasn’t intrigued by where the series was going. I was increasingly disappointed that the programme I had started watching seemed to have disappeared.
I don’t object to Goliath because it changed, and I wanted everything to remain exactly the same. Television programmes should develop; I object because it changed what kind of programme it was.
There is a considerable difference between developing a character within a genre and gradually replacing the genre itself.
By Season 4, some of the legal framework returns, but by then my relationship with the series had changed. I was no longer waiting enthusiastically for the next episode. I was hoping it might finally become the programme that had drawn me in during Season 1.
For me, it never quite did.
Our Ratings
Season 1: 4/5
The programme I thought I had signed up for. Strong legal structure, a compelling case and Billy McBride at his best.
Season 2: 2/5
Still watchable, but the shift towards something darker and stranger had begun.
Season 3: 1/5
The point where the surrealism and fragmented storytelling overwhelmed what I had enjoyed about the series.
Season 4: 2/5
A stronger legal case and some movement back towards its roots, but not enough to recover what had been lost.
Overall Rating: 2/5
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