5.5

The Rainmaker Is a Bland, Derivative Adaptation That Forgets to Have Any Fun

By Rory Doherty  |  August 15, 2025 | 8:13pm
(Photo: USA Network)
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The Rainmaker Is a Bland, Derivative Adaptation That Forgets to Have Any Fun
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The Rainmaker is currently the only original drama airing on USA Network. Resident Alien aired its finale last week, and while there is at least one more show on the way, this reimagined episodic version of John Grisham’s legal novel marks a moment of transition for a network that has, in recent years, neglected its former stellar run of pleasurable scripted entertainment, replacing it with sports, reality, and pro-wrestling coverage. 

The overlapping runs of Monk, Psych, Burn Notice and then Suits helped define USA’s “Blue Sky era”, and even though these hits led to a brief flirtation with niche, buzzy and Prestige TV-adjacent thrillers like Mr. Robot and The Sinner, it’s clear the executives have put their heads together and decided to take advantage of the diminishing returns of blockbuster-scale streaming shows, and commit to pacy, drama-filled procedurals with simple ambitions and sparky characters. However, the expectations of our current moment still pervade USA Network’s soft reboot of their Blue Sky era; The Rainmaker is first and foremost a valuable, identifiable IP, promising the same safe pleasures that Grisham provided for a generation of paperback readers.

These are the double-pronged nostalgic impulses behind USA’s The Rainmaker, and it ultimately makes the show feel more compromised than novel. Grisham’s 1995 book is a  David-versus-Goliath tale of a law school graduate on the cusp of taking the bar who lands, to his initial disappointment, at a crummy firm of ambulance chasers, but soon stumbles on a seismic insurance case to prove himself up against a big Memphis firm. 

The term “rainmaker” refers to a lawyer who pulls off the impossible and wins massive damages in a case – a perfectly acceptable ambition for a hotshot up-and-comer like Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan, whose resemblance to a young Matt Damon feels intentional) after he’s fired from the illustrious Tinley Britt for snapping back at his boss Leo F. Drummond (John Slattery) in the first welcome meeting offered to the new graduate employees. 

This direct, early confrontation between Rudy and Drummond is a deviation from Grisham’s novel, as well as from the robust 1997 film adaptation starring Matt Damon and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. For one, the series is not set in Grisham’s frequent setting of Memphis, but rather in South Carolina. It was not shot in South Carolina, of course, but rather the budget-saving alternative of Ireland, which gives the exterior scenes set in churchyards and old portions of town an alienating and confusing vibe. In the first five episodes of the ten-episode series that were provided to us, The Rainmaker duly conforms to the instincts of television structure by stretching out every relationship, plot wrinkle, and conspiracy detail across entertaining but overly extended episodes, adding its own salacious criminal subplots and freely improvising off Grisham’s plotboiler structure. 

Much has remained intact, even in a derivative form, from Grisham’s book. Rudy goes to work for the less-than-reputable “Bruiser” Stone, but the character is now a woman and played by Lana Parrilla. Rudy’s main colleague is Deck Shifflet (P.J. Byrne, taking over the role from Danny Devito in the 1997 film), a paralegal of the most dubious quality, who scrappily bends procedure and rules to sign up clients and secure money for Bruiser’s film. Rudy’s first client Dot Black (Karen Bryson) is sitting on a potentially massive case against the hospital her recovered addict son died at; the changes made to Dot’s case from the novel are welcome, as they require a higher degree of investigative, mystery-solving storytelling, even though there are a couple frustrating moments where you realize the next development or conclusion an entire episode before the characters do.

Rudy also grows close to Kelly (Robyn Cara), a victim of domestic violence, although Kelly is not a hospital patient but Rudy’s neighbor, and The Rainmaker is happy to play with the queasy dramatic tension of Kelly’s abuse (both the novel and film feature Kelly’s abusive boyfriend, but much in the story). A new addition is Rudy growing apart from his wealthy law school girlfriend, Sarah (Madison Iseman), who ends up representing the hospital as part of Tinley Britt’s counsel; Rudy is also grieving an older brother who died in a car accident.

These notes of internal character conflict would be more welcome in a show that focused on the mental fortitude of mounting an impossible court case, rather than the distracted crime thriller that The Rainmaker quickly devolves into. What’s strange and ultimately damning about this adaptation is that, despite the broadly detailed but engaging roster of lawyer characters, there’s very little courtroom drama in the first half of the series, and instead quite a lot of kidnapping, murder, and extraneous conspiracy. In the first three and a half hours of the first season, there are about three scenes set in a courtroom, and Drummond (played with wealthy, subdued menace by Slattery) risks being overshadowed by Dan Fogler as nurse Melvin Pritcher, who loses his ailing mother to an arson attack in the opening scene and sets off on an unstable crusade for personal justice.

His arc is definitely intertwined with Dot’s case, but it is so much more satisfying to watch Rudy reference obscure case law, use empathy to undercut his opponent’s momentum, or stumble in the face of the better prepped and funded team than watch original characters prowl around the neighborhood like a budget Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. So far, The Rainmaker has decreed that the safe, dependable joy of a plotboiler paperback is beneath it, especially for a show honored with taking USA Network back to its glory days. But audiences don’t like being courted with nostalgia and denied the quality they were once accustomed to. Unless The Rainmaker course corrects to the juicy, theatrical courtroom sparring promised by a Grisham reboot, USA Network’s hopes of a new scripted golden era are more “pie in the sky”.

The Rainmaker premieres August 15 on USA and on Peacock on August 22.

Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.

 
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