Ally McBeal

Series Summary

Legal series are usually serious affairs, filled with intrigue and drama, but this David E. Kelley creation strayed from the formula with its mixture of quirky comedy and romance. Calista Flockhart stars as Ally McBeal, a young, miniskirt-wearing lawyer who finds herself employed at Cage/Fish & Associates, a law firm where her childhood sweetheart (Gil Bellows) and his pretty wife (Courtney Thorne-Smith) also work. Sounds normal enough, but when you add in wattle-loving partner Richard Fish (Greg Germann), socially awkward (but successful) boss John Cage (Peter MacNicol), and a number of dream sequences, ALLY MCBEAL gets delightfully strange. Ally and her coworkers fought for a variety of oddball cases and causes, but the most interesting part of this Fox dramedy was what happened outside of the courtroom.

Premiered on: September 8, 1997

Cast

Calista Flockhart … Ally McBeal
Greg Germann … Richard Fish
Jane Krakowski … Elaine Vassal
Peter MacNicol … John Cage
Lisa Nicole Carson … Renée Raddick
Portia de Rossi … Nell Porter
Lucy Liu … Ling Woo
Gil Bellows … Billy Allen Thomas
Courtney Thorne-Smith … Georgia Thomas
Robert Downey Jr. … Larry Paul
Dyan Cannon … Jennifer "Whipper" Cone
Hayden Panettiere … Maddie Harrington
Vonda Shepard … Herself
James LeGros … Mark Albert
Regina Hall … Corretta Lipp
Julianne Nicholson … Jenny Shaw
Josh Hopkins … Raymond Millbury
James Marsden … Glenn Foy
Taye Diggs … Jackson Duper