When TNT was still producing original series, Franklin & Bash was one of the network’s signature shows from 2011 to 2014.
Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar lead the cast as Jared Franklin and Peter Bash, a pair of maverick lawyers who are recruited to a larger law firm.
Although the show has been off the air for over a decade, Franklin & Bash is currently ranked among Netflix‘s top 10 series.
To celebrate the show’s resurgence, Watch With Us is sharing three reasons why you should watch Franklin & Bash on Netflix this month.
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It’s a Buddy Comedy Mashed Up With a Legal Drama
Buddy comedies tend to be action-oriented stories revolving around cops or other law enforcement officers. Franklin & Bash turns that genre on its head by bringing those conventions into a legal dramedy. Jared and Peter are practically joined at the hip and they do tend to clown around a lot. And we mean a lot!
However, they are also skilled lawyers with a knack for winning difficult cases. It’s why they were brought into the Infeld & Daniels law firm. The duo is often given a lot of leeway to handle their cases, but their frat boy mentality does affect the people around them, and not always for the better. This show does have its serious moments, but the tone of the series is largely light and fluffy compared to every other legal show on TV.
The Cast Is Superb
Meyer and Gosselaar were well-chosen to play Jared and Peter, and the show’s comedic energy wouldn’t be nearly as effective without them. The strength of this show is that it isn’t solely reliant on them. Malcolm McDowell brings a lot of charm to the series as Stanton Infeld, the cofounder of Infeld-Daniels. Infeld may have ulterior motives for bringing in Jared and Pete, but he’s also like a mentor to them.
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Kumail Nanjiani had a role in the first three seasons as Pindar Singh, a classmate of the title characters who came to work with them at Infeld-Daniels. Better Call Saul standout Rhea Seehorn had a long stint on this series as well. She played Ellen Swatello, a member of the DA’s office who eventually teamed up with Jared and Peter at Infeld-Daniels. Watching her on this series, it seems obvious that she was going to be a breakout star.
Heather Locklear also joined the cast in the third season as Rachel Rose King, a new partner in the firm who wasn’t really a fan of Jared and Peter’s tomfoolery. The way Rachel was written out of the show was so brilliant that it had major implications in the fourth and final series.
This Show May Fill the ‘Suits’-sized Hole in Your Heart
Is Franklin & Bash as good as Suits? No, of course not. But it has more in common with that series than Suits: LA ever did. The people behind that Suits spinoff failed to recognize that it was the chemistry between Harvey (Gabriel Macht) and Mike (Patrick J. Adams) that made Suits stand out.
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Jared and Peter may not have the same type of deep connection, but this show lives and dies by the way they play off of each other. It’s not an exact replica of Suits‘ winning formula, but Franklin & Bash‘s strong early showing on Netflix suggests that it could already be finding a new audience just like the former did two years ago. Few shows ever experience that kind of sustained popularity, and it may be the next best thing to having another 40 episodes of Suits to binge.
Franklin & Bash is streaming on Netflix.
