Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Delilah’ On OWN, Where An Earnest Lawyer Takes On A Big Defense Contractor — And Her Best Friend

Delilah continues the recent OWN tradition of showing the ups and downs of successful Black families. In this case, the family is led by an attorney who has stuck to her principles during a 20-year career and has struck out on her own. Now a case comes to her that may challenge some of her closest relationships.

DELILAH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of downtown Charlotte; we pan down to a row of townhouses. A woman gets woken up by a text that says “Hey! Can we talk?”

The Gist: Delilah Connolly (Maahra Hill) used to be an associate at a high-powered firm, but she’s become a sole practitioner so she can take care of her daughter Maia (Kelly Jacobs) and son Marcus (Braelyn Rankins); she has primary custody of them since her divorce from her irresponsible ex Gordon Leighton (Lyriq Bent). She’s also caring for her young nephew Dion (Khalil Johnson) while her brother Nate (Leonard Harmon) rehabs at a VA hospital and Dion’s mother is ready to care for him again.

That middle-of-the-night text is from Leah Davis (Saycon Sengbloh), an old college friend who ends up going straight to her office. Leah tells Delilah that she was unfairly fired from the defense contractor she worked for — she was the assistant to the CEO — and that they’re following her every move. She wants Delilah to take the case, but she has doubts because she knows Leah’s flair for the over-dramatic. When Delilah meets her best friend, Tamara Grayson (Jill Marie Jones), she tells Delilah not to take the case, citing the fact that Leah is “seven kinds of crazy.”

But as Delilah gets embroiled in the case, she realizes that maybe her crazy frenemy isn’t actually being crazy this time around, especially after she’s offered a settlement if she gives up all of her personal passwords, her phone and laptop. Meanwhile, Delilah fields an informational interview with a young lawyer named Demetria Barnes (Susan Heyward) who has admired the fact that six years ago, she defended a girl who got arrested for being a Black girl driving a nice car. She asks for a job, but Delilah can’t give her one. She is impressed by her attention to detail, though her sharp assistant Harper Courant (Ozioma Akagha) — the girl Delilah defended six years ago — isn’t as convinced.

Tamara, still working at a high-powered firm, is scheduled to take a meeting with the same CEO that fired Leah; they want to change law firms. This means that, for the first time in both of their law careers, Tamara and Delilah may be going up against each other.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Delilah feels like a combination of Greenleaf, All Rise and The Good Fight.

Our Take: The Greenleaf reference isn’t an accident. Delilah’s executive producers Craig Wright and Charles Randolph-Wright are from that OWN hit; both are produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions. With many of the Harpo-produced dramas on Oprah’s network, they pride themselves in two things: A roster of fantastic actors and situations that tend to be rife with juicy twists and turns. Delilah definitely has the former, but we’re not sure it has the latter.

The show is trying to balance the ongoing conspiracy that Delilah dives into with a more weekly series about a principled lawyer struggling to maintain a business and be a decent mom to her two kids and an aunt to little Dion. In doing so, it gives a bit of short shrift to the mystery at hand, giving it the feel of a CBS-style procedural that takes leaps of faith to push the story along. The characters in this conspiracy, except for Leah, seem to be thinly drawn and just serve to get killed or otherwise silenced along the way.

But by the end of the first hour we have a pretty solid idea about where Delilah is as a lawyer, mom and woman, and we have a little bit of insight into the kids. Dion is adorable and a bit sad about his parents; Marcus is an annoying preteen who still wants to make his mom smile. Maia gets the most time, as she’s an accomplished violinist who wants to improve; she’s looking at a vintage violin that costs ten grand, and her dad somehow comes through with the money even though he can’t seem to scratch up $200 to send to Delilah for child support.

The writing in that regard, plus the performances by Hill, Jones, Heyward and Akagha are top notch. We just hope that the mystery/conspiracy that will drive the first season — and the unexpected rivalry that it might create between Delilah and Tamara — sets stronger as the season goes on. As it is, it takes a distant back seat to the theme of a Black woman trying to hold it down and stick to her principles when things are getting difficult.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Delilah gets a call from her investigator Mace (Joe Holt), whom she dispatched to the house of someone who got fired along with Leah, to see if he’s still being watched. He gives her bad news: That guy is dead, not long before he was going to meet with Delilah to spill about the defective military radios that he designed.

Sleeper Star: Kelly Jacobs is a breath of fresh air as Maia; she plays a teenager who is achieving instead of going to the umpteenth party with MDMA floating around, as we see most teens doing on TV these days.

Most Pilot-y Line: The show wants to have the best of both worlds when it comes to the pandemic. Leah and Delilah refer to 2020 as a tough year, but no one on the show is masking or distancing. So if the pandemic was a reality in the show’s universe, where are they now? Post-pandemic?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Delilah is a flawed but enjoyable law series that has a strong cast. We just wish the mystery that will carry the season was a bit more fleshed out.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Delilah On Oprah.com