Peter Norwalk

How To Get Away With Murder wraps up its season with a two-hour finale that solves the central mystery while leaving some questions unanswered. Some of the episode is a slog, padded out by yet another snoozy case of the week, but the last 10 minutes are as suspenseful as anything on television. If Peter Norwalk and the writers can figure out how to drop the procedural element of the show and more fully explore the actions of the regular characters, some of whom are not much more fleshed out than when the series began, the show will be much improved in season 2.

How to Get Away With Murder, the new ABC drama from writer Peter Norwalk and executive producer Shonda Rimes, has the potential to drive off the rails at any moment. The premise it sets up for itself (spoiler alert: it’s a murder) cannot sustain itself for more than a season. Its characters, a group of ambitious law students, are pitched at tones ranging between frantic and rabid. Its procedural elements are nothing that would be out of place on a Dick Wolf show. But the one element that gives me utter confidence that this show is worth watching, besides Shondaland’s unquestionable track record, is the central performance of Viola Davis, one of the great American actresses of our time. Her role as Annalise Keating, criminal law professor at Philadelphia’s fictional Middleton University, shows herself to be charismatic, intelligent, and supremely manipulative in just a handful of scenes. She’s a predator with flashes of humanity. If the writing holds up, Davis will be able to create an antihero in the league of Tony Soprano and Walter White.