Suits: LA hopes to recreate the runaway success of its predecessor

Before Meghan Markle became a duchess, she was the fourth-billed actor on a legal drama called Suits.

It debuted in 2011 on what the Americans call a “basic cable” channel, the USA Network. Suits fit the mould of a mid-level series that was compulsive and slick but not exactly prestige.

It was a workhorse, reliably delivering twisty plotlines and attractive actors sashaying down hallways with righteous purpose, and it ran for 134 episodes over nine seasons.

The story started off with Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), a whip-smart guy with an eidetic memory who could rattle off case law, game out legal strategy and outwit his opponents. Mike is hired by Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) despite the fact that he, and this is a biggie, never went to law school and has no licence to practice.

Those early years on Suits, in between the case-of-the-week dramas and hostile takeover power plays, almost always centred on Mike almost getting caught, then surviving, again and again, until he was eventually was nabbed.

It made for soapy, “gasp!” TV, which is likely why it was consistently among the most pirated shows in Australia in its early years.

The first seasons came out during the pre-streaming era when paying for programming was not yet ingrained behaviour for the 70 per cent of the country who either couldn’t or wouldn’t buy Foxtel, who had the local distribution rights.

Suits had already been available on Australian Netflix for some years when it finally hit the platform in the US in 2023 and it completely blew up. Yanks who had never seen it the first time around, discovered a very watchable (and bingeable) series that ran to almost 100 hours.

It was low stakes (the plotlines were actually high stakes but never felt that way, like in a soap opera, you know?) and repetitive, but when the desire is for stress-free TV that you could set and forget, those are virtues. Also, the characters were relatively well-developed and generally likeable.

It felt like anathema to the trend of prestige TV, where shows run six or eight episodes a season, and half of them are limited series or if there are multiple instalments, you’re waiting two or three years in between. By the time you’re invested, it’s already over.

But Suits? It went on, and on, and on – and it finished 2023 as the most streamed series in the US for the year.

It wasn’t surprising then that Suits creator Aaron Korsh was asked to dream up another spin-off in the same world (there had already been another spin-off, Pearson, in 2019 but only lasted one season).

So, now we have Suits: LA, which premieres today on 7plus. It’s set in the same universe as the original series and centred on a character named Ted Black (Stephen Amell) who previously worked in New York City as a prosecutor.

You know who also used to have that job in that city? Harvey, who has a photo cameo in the pilot, appearing in a picture with Ted. Macht will be a guest star later in the year and was even at the premiere gala event.

Ted, whose sartorial choices align with his name, is a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles, where he decamped to from NYC some years ago following a particularly grueling case in the prosecutor’s office.

He co-owns a firm which specialises in entertainment and defence, but is blindsided when his friend and partner Stuart Lane (Josh McDermitt) pulls a move that upends Ted’s world. This forces him into making some tough choices, questions who he can and can’t trust, and reflect on the choices he made that got him to where he is.

The supporting characters include Erica Rollins (Lex Scott Davis), a gun entertainment lawyer who can get things done but doesn’t actually know anything about pop culture, her junior associate and aspiring screenwriter Leah (Alice Lee), and Rick Dodson (Bryan Greenberg), another ambitious lawyer.

There are some twists, which we’ve promised to not reveal, which is supposed to give insight to Ted’s history and emotional trauma (what drama lead character doesn’t have emotional trauma?).

There’s also the wheeling and dealing you expect from characters who are paid a lot of money for their time plus that posture-perfect striding the franchise really seems to love.

Whether Suits: LA will have the same staying power as the original series is up in the air, but it certainly has a large audience primed to be curious.

Suits: LA is streaming on 7plus with new episodes weekly