The Rainmaker: A First Look at the New Adaptation

Who would have expected to see The Rainmaker return in serial form in 2025? It was probably only a matter of time, given that many cult films from past decades often return in episodic form on modern streaming services and beyond, but it's still quite striking to witness this new adaptation of John Grisham's 1995 novel, which tells the story of a young law school graduate who takes on an insurance company, guilty of denying life-saving treatment to a boy with leukemia, causing his death.

In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola released a solid and intense film, with Matt Damon as the protagonist Rudy Baylor, Danny DeVito as his "para-lawyer" Deck Shifflet, and a stellar cast that included Jon Voight, Claire Danes, Mickey Rourke, and Danny Glover. It was a classic and well-constructed legal drama, perhaps not as memorable as other adaptations but certainly of good quality.

The Rainmaker: Can It Rain Forever?

Almost thirty years later, Michael Seitzman and Jason Richman decided to bring The Rainmaker back to TV for USA Network (in Italy, it will be released on Sky and NOW from December 5th) with the ambition of expanding the over five hundred pages of the original novel into ten episodes instead of compressing them into two hours of film. On paper, a sensible choice: Grisham writes novels dense with legal details, secondary characters, and subplots that are inevitably sacrificed in a shorter runtime. After watching the first three episodes, available to the press in preview, we find ourselves grappling with a beginning that is indeed full of ideas, but it's not yet clear where they are heading, with the potential still fully developing. But let's go in order and discover the story behind this very fresh small-screen adaptation.

Rudy Baylor is a young, newly graduated lawyer. On his first day at a large law firm, he is immediately fired for having a heated argument with the head of the company. With no alternatives, he agrees to work for a small law firm led by the eccentric Jocelyn "Bruiser" Stone and paralegal Deck Shifflet. Here, Rudy stumbles upon a case involving the suspicious death of a client's son, who died of an overdose in the hospital. Investigating, he and his unlikely team uncover a web of intrigue and omissions that forces them to challenge a corrupt system, questioning power dynamics, morality, and the true nature of justice. Meanwhile, the protagonist must also face a potential crisis with his girlfriend, now an important collaborator at the rival law firm, and a situation involving his neighbor who is a victim of violence.

A Matter of Expectations

In the first three episodes, there are probably forty minutes of good television and eighty minutes of filler. It gets lost in unnecessarily prolonged dialogues, without fully delving into the personalities of the various characters, whether main or secondary, who appear to be victims of an objective schematicism in managing interpersonal relationships. The love story in crisis because the two lovers are on opposite sides of the barricade seems to follow overly predictable guidelines, and the lack of chemistry between Milo Callaghan and Madison Iseman does not help to make their conflicted relationship credible and genuine. But in general, the entire cast seems to move with caricatured jolts, inevitably losing the comparison with their counterparts in the aforementioned film adaptation.

Not that the series, as mentioned, isn't enjoyable, and already in this opening trio, ideas capable of arousing public interest emerge, with the social theme always present and updated to contemporary times, even if the script seems unwilling to dare too much. The risk of stretching the source material beyond its breaking point is, of course, always present, and that's precisely where lengthy parts and dull moments are created. It remains to be seen how all the various subplots will be developed to fully understand the success or failure of this new version, with the central legal case so far only glimpsed, hopefully ready to explode in all its dramatic power, still in its embryonic stage.