Shark is a legal drama series starring James Woods as Sebastian Stark, a notorious Los Angeles defense attorney who becomes a prosecutor. It premiered on CBS in September 2006, in the 10 p.m. Eastern timezone Thursday night spot. The pilot was directed by Spike Lee.
Shark was in jeopardy of getting canceled before it even started, but James Woods (I) gave the legal drama new life once he signed on to star in the pilot. Woods has spent most of his career focusing on feature films, not television.
Shark is slightly inaccurate in implying that the Los Angeles County District Attorney is controlled by the City of Los Angeles. The District Attorney is actually an independently elected official of the county government. If anyone could pressure the D.A. to hire a former criminal defense attorney like Sebastian Stark, it would be the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who control the county budget. The City of Los Angeles does have a City Attorney, but that official prosecutes only misdemeanors and files a variety of civil lawsuits against criminals, rather than the high-stakes felony prosecutions depicted in the show.
Stark has three rules, which he refers to as his "Cutthroat Manifesto:" * "Trial is War. Second place is death." * "Truth is relative. Pick one that works." * "In a jury trial, there are only twelve opinions that matter and yours [speaking to his team] is not one of them."
