TV dramas have been around for decades, using various themes and genres with the goal to tell a compelling story for us, the viewer, to be entertained with. Due to this focus, the finite details of real world professions and systems are often skewed, sped up, or blatantly ignored. The criminal justice system is one such example in which TV dramas have always taken shortcuts for the sake of the narrative and the new CBS crime drama Bull is no exception. Bull is another TV drama focused on the criminal justice system. However, the key distinction between this show and similar dramas is that the show is focused on the jury and the voir dire process. The show has a very interesting major plot device that allows this to work. They use a supercomputer, which looks at the online history of each jury member and decides if they
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The voir dire is one thing they managed to get half-right. The defendant used proper preemptory challenge when making cuts. It is especially noticeable when the reasons why jurors are cut is due to incorrectly answering psychological questions that only Bull knows the value of. This emphasizes the definition of preemptory challenge-removal without reason. Also, in almost every episode, whenever the defense asks frivolous questions during voir dire, the prosecution always retorts referencing the rule that questions must be “kept within reason and relevance” (Dummond, 2012). Since the entire series revolves around the jury, it’s expected that they would represent this process accurately. Another thing they managed to get right was evidence. Or rather, that all their evidence was obtained legally, which is constantly an issue with TV law dramas. For example, the main reason why Brandon is a suspect is due to the seminal DNA found in Alyssa, which is physical evidence, and Taylor’s text is a prime example of verbal evidence (“How is Evidence Legally Obtained?”,
The voir dire is one thing they managed to get half-right. The defendant used proper preemptory challenge when making cuts. It is especially noticeable when the reasons why jurors are cut is due to incorrectly answering psychological questions that only Bull knows the value of. This emphasizes the definition of preemptory challenge-removal without reason. Also, in almost every episode, whenever the defense asks frivolous questions during voir dire, the prosecution always retorts referencing the rule that questions must be “kept within reason and relevance” (Dummond, 2012). Since the entire series revolves around the jury, it’s expected that they would represent this process accurately. Another thing they managed to get right was evidence. Or rather, that all their evidence was obtained legally, which is constantly an issue with TV law dramas. For example, the main reason why Brandon is a suspect is due to the seminal DNA found in Alyssa, which is physical evidence, and Taylor’s text is a prime example of verbal evidence (“How is Evidence Legally Obtained?”,