Television: Here Come The Judges

(3 of 3)

The show still has the same bad puns ("The Case of the Isuzu That Wasn't a Trooper"), crazed bongo music and postcase interviews as the original, but has added mid-case opinions from people in a Manhattan shopping center, Pop-Up Video-like bubbles and Web-based voting by people at home. The last is almost as much fun to watch fluctuate as the Dow or congressional voting on C-SPAN. Through it all, Koch carefully explains the law and amusedly renders evenhanded decisions. Unfortunately, the show runs for an hour, with only three cases, and no amount of cool graphics is going to make some guy's poor used-car purchase seem interesting for 20 minutes.

The show's biggest mistake, however, is its attention to the law. Koch, who as mayor appointed Sheindlin to the family-court bench in 1982, says he knows his show won't beat Judge Judy in the ratings because of his judicial diligence. "The reason she's No. 1 is her style, which is very confrontational, like a public scold," he says. "And I happen to know her. She's a very nice lady. Judge Judy has said she makes decisions on the basis of common sense. And I have said, 'That's not what the law is all about.' We do it on the law. This is not a court of compassion; this is a court of law."

Stu Billett, executive producer of both the original People's Court and Koch's version, is blunter in explaining his competitor's success: "It's because there's a humiliation factor, and maybe people like to see people humiliated." Could be. At week's end the Springer show was still ahead of its judicial competition. For some viewers, it seems, one of the few things better than seeing someone get yelled at is seeing someone get punched.

--Reported by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York