This week's ''selfie trend'', courtesy of Beyonce, is ''I woke up like this''. It's a smug display of effortless beauty, already co-opted, contrived and made ridiculous by the likes of Kim Kardashian. Always ahead of the curve, the producers of The Good Wife (Ten, Wednesday, 9.30pm) have used the bedroom/alarm clock conceit to set the tone for a very jaunty episode.
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Seeing all our favourite lawyers greet the day and spring into action in their jimmy-jams is cute. It is almost a nod to old Hollywood battles between the sexes: Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey. Doris Day and Rock Hudson. It would have been nice if Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) and Will Gardner (Josh Charles) awoke in different beds wearing matching halves of otherwise demure navy silk pyjamas. The writers stopped just short of nonsense, but gave us much to enjoy in an episode where the new firm of Florrick Agos goes ''balls to the wall'' with erstwhile employers Lockhart Gardner. It had everything: pallets of redacted files, Christine Baranski shedding real tears, Josh Charles looking hurt, and our Melissa George with her head in Alicia's saucepans - crippled by morning sickness and bunging on an accent we haven't heard since Ginger left Gilligan's Island.
Does it matter that this legal drama might be the best soap on television, ever since Revenge went to the dogs? The Good Wife is a well-made old-school legal drama. The balance is struck between long storylines - all involving unrequited love and/or the hunger for power - and episodic, genuinely interesting lawsuits. These unusual cases have afforded the inclusion of a constellation of impressive guest stars. After five seasons, one of the great treats of The Good Wife is anticipating the return of Michael J. Fox, Matthew Perry, Nathan Lane, Martha Plimpton or Stockard Channing.
The original premise for the show - Florrick's commitment to her philandering husband - has receded into memory, as the springboard that brought us together with the most interesting office staff since Boston Legal.
Like home-grown Rake, The Good Wife takes a little licence with the law in the interests of lively entertainment. In both shows, our learned colleagues are just as likely to end up behind bars or victims of quirky crimes themselves. Not exactly Perry Mason's MO.
The Escape Artist (SBS, Thursday, 9.35pm) takes this trend to a new extreme. David Tennant's brilliant, arrogant criminal barrister, Will Burton, learns to his own peril the consequences of working too hard for a guilty man, when the freed psychopath returns to slay his wife.
Not just a rip-roaring thriller, The Escape Artist continues to shift the goal posts and our own ideas about justice and retribution. From David Wolstencroft, the creator of Spooks, this is a nuanced and occasionally challenging piece of work, brought to life by an extraordinary cast, including Sophie Okonedo, Toby Kebbell, and the always delightful Ashley Jensen (Extras).
These shows do not work without a charismatic lead. As Margulies brings so much dry-cleaned thoroughness to her icy Alicia, Tennant can always be relied upon to deliver emotion and heart. As the most successful man in chambers, he also manages to look surprisingly expensive, in a departure from his professionally dishevelled look of recent years.
The great relief in both these fine dramas is an absence of zombies, zombie children or supernatural time-travelling creatures of fantasy fiction.
While legal dramas remain the last bastion of pseudo realism, we shall most certainly continue to watch.
