The double-length pilot is breezily entertaining, with Mike accidentally gatecrashing a Pearson Hardman recruitment day while trying to evade the police during a botched drug deal. It’s implausible but fun. Within seconds Mike has confessed to being a) not a qualified lawyer, b) in possession of a briefcase full of marijuana, and these strike Harvey as the perfect credentials to become his new associate. It helps that Mike can recite every line from a legal textbook in a smart alec sort of way.
I wish it carried on in this vein but, like all procedurals, Suits must fill its episodes with cases, and these are dull. No matter: skip to the Meghan bits! Most of them seem to be based around the fact that she’s beautiful. Here is Rachel introducing herself to Mike. Rachel: “Hi, I’m Rachel Zane. I’ll be giving you your orientation.” Mike: “Wow, you’re pretty.” Rachel tells him off for ogling her, then sashays out of the office in a pencil skirt that Jessica Rabbit would have rejected for being too sexy. The casting notes for Rachel’s character presumably consisted of two words: “smart” and “hot”.
Really, Rachel deserves better than Mike, who looks about 14 years old, but the script dooms her to fall in love with him. Their relationship lasts for seven series, at which point Meghan found her prince and quit the show. In his memoir, Harry joked that he required electric shock therapy after googling his bride-to-be and finding a scene in which she and a castmate were “mauling each other in some sort of office or conference room. I didn’t need to see such things”. In which case I hope he has never seen the end of series two, which culminates in a positively acrobatic sex scene in a filing cupboard.
It’s not just them – almost every conversation in Suits is flirtatious and freighted with sex. Everyone is attractive. Even when Mike goes to the tailor, there’s a frisson with the woman taking his inside leg measurement. There’s something very dated about it. But perhaps that’s one of the reasons for the show’s popularity. Suits is easy-going, middle-of-the-road television that feels like it’s from a less complicated era. It has never troubled the Emmys or the Golden Globes, but neither have most of the programmes that people actually watch.
All nine series of Suits are available as a boxset on BBC iPlayer