When an existing television show or film gets remade, the boilerplate first question to the creator of the new incarnation is simply “why?” What’s the justification for retreading the past? In the case of Presumed Innocent, a gripping, sharp-edged legal thriller headlined by Jake Gyllenhaal that updates both Scott Turow’s best-selling 1987 novel about a prosecutor charged with murdering a colleague and the hit 1990 Hollywood adaptation starring Harrison Ford, the better question is “why not?”

Presumed Innocent has a terrific plot, rife with twists that make you question the intent of its harried American protagonist, Rozat “Rusty” Sabich (Gyllenhaal), who had an affair with the murder victim, fellow prosecutor Carolyn Pohemus (Renate Reinsve). But in 2024 there are fascinating new perspectives that transform the dynamic, including Rusty’s culpability and the relationship with his wife, Barbara (Ruth Negga), and their children. The story has all kinds of contemporary reckonings to deal with that add to its already abrasive momentum.

“The why for me in almost every project is story and character. The plot here is right and the character development in the book was so juicy. I would have done it 30 years ago but I was too young and inexperienced,” says David E. Kelley, the show’s creator. “When you get a character like Rusty, so damaged, it’s fertile storytelling ground for the writer.”

Kelley, who was working as a newly graduated lawyer in Boston in 1986 when he made the move to television as a writer and then producer on the legal drama L.A. Law, is full of praise for Turow – “I was trying to channel the characters he created,” Kelley notes – but his take on the novel is rife not only with cutting dialogue and questionable motivations but a deeper, genuine sense of who Carolyn was and how Barbara is dealing with the duress her husband has unleashed. The way they reflect on Gyllenhaal’s Rusty strips away easy sympathy.

“I was fascinated by the contradictions in the character,” says Kelley, whose numerous other television successes include Ally McBeal and Big Little Lies. “Rusty very much believes in the truth, but he lies. He chose a career in justice, but he subverts it. He’s a loyal family man and he betrays that. None of that is to say that those aren’t genuine principles, he is that guy. But he’s consumed by a very complicated cocktail of passion, ego, and desperation for affirmation that causes his behaviour to derail.”

After a career in movies that over the last 25 years had seen him successfully jump between an Academy Award winner (Brokeback Mountain), superhero blockbusters (Spider-Man: Far from Home) and cult classics (Nightcrawler), Jake Gyllenhaal had been looking for the right television-limited series to star in. He was attracted to the idea of changing up his working circumstances, and the character of Rusty Sabich was fascinating because even as he tries to prove his innocence of murder he’s revealed to be guilty of so much else.

“When I first read the pilot it was so propulsive and interesting and I wanted to know what happens next, and I can imagine a viewer feeling that now. But playing Rusty was a bit more intense,” says Gyllenhaal, who’s also an executive producer. “Every scene you walk into there’s three or four things you have to hold, and three or four things you’re at war with, whether you’re in a family scene or the character that he is professionally. There’s always something there and the duality of that was fascinating to me.”

Speaking from New York, where he is currently preparing for a Broadway revival of William Shakespeare’s Othello where he’ll play Iago alongside Denzel Washington in the title role, Gyllenhaal is full of insight and vibrant energy. Having just played a bare-knuckled bouncer reluctantly fighting for his life in Amazon Prime’s enjoyably pulpy Road House remake, he was most attracted to the domestic drama Kelley was exploring in Presumed Innocent. Rusty goes between two trials: one in the courtroom, one at home.

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“Truly the reason why I wanted to do the show was for the family dynamic,” Gyllenhaal says. “We always knew that the courtroom drama would be fascinating, but I think one juxtaposed against the other, walking into the house from the courtroom and vice versa, meant they change each other, and that dance definitely makes this unique.”

The professional exchanges throughout the show leave bruises. Whether allies, such as Rusty’s boss Raymond Horgan (Bill Camp), or adversaries like the prosecutor pursuing a conviction against him, Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard), all the lawyers, including Carolyn Pohemus, are revealed as smart, deeply flawed litigators in and outside the courtroom. For Gyllenhaal’s co-star Nana Mensah, who plays Detective Alana Rodriguez, the Chicago police officer assigned to investigate the case, that meant a welcome change from cop cliches.

“Sometimes detectives can be a little bit two-dimensional, but this particular detective was torn in her allegiances between her colleague who was brutally murdered and her colleague who was on trial for said brutal murder,” Mensah says. “She’s just trying to do the right thing and help her friend, but then certain things make her question her allegiance.”

All the female characters in Presumed Innocent have their own lives outside their connection to Rusty, and their motivations are nuanced. In the book, Carolyn is something of a temptress, but here she’s conflicted about Rusty’s worrying obsession with her, while Barbara is much more than the scorned wife. The two women upend the idea of Rusty as a protagonist seeking redemption.

“And one doesn’t cancel the other. Barbara was oddly present in a way for Rusty’s relationship with Carolyn, and vice versa,” Kelley says. “We were blessed to have very gifted actresses playing those roles, because so much of the storytelling was subtextual – you see and feel their emotions, without having them articulated.”

Gyllenhall says: “We have a kind of naturalism and behaviour that we haven’t really seen in this space. There’s a lot of subversion in this story in terms of using certain tropes we’re used to seeing, but then turning them on their end. I like that you’re following a typical legal thriller, but it’s not like that at all.”

Kelley cites Gyllenhaal’s intensity as an actor as integral to his casting – “Rusty wants, he wants, he wants,” Kelley observes – and having written or co-written every episode, Kelley was in a way Presumed Innocent’s first viewer. As is his preference, he only visited the set twice lest he get in the way of the cast and directors, but Kelley would watch the dailies, the raw, unedited footage accumulated over each day of shooting.

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“It’s helpful for me, because I can be more singularly focused on the characters. It’s not Ruth and Jake and Peter, it’s Barbara and Rusty and Molto. That’s who I’m sitting with when I watch the dailies,” Kelley says. “If I’m on a project I’m spending a lot of time with these people. They’re in your head. It helps to like them, but that said Rusty is very difficult to like. When you get hold of a good character like that it can be a toy. And Rusty Sabich was an excellent one to play with.”

Presumed Innocent streams on Apple TV+.

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