Viola Davis won an Emmy for How to Get Away with Murder. She became the first Black woman to take the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, playing Annalise Keating, a criminal defense attorney and law professor at a Philadelphia university. That is the fact the show will be remembered by, and it is the right one.
Peter Nowalk created the show. ABC aired it. It ran six seasons and 90 episodes, premiering September 25, 2014, and ending May 14, 2020. Shonda Rhimes produced it through Shondaland, and it went out as part of a night of programming under that banner. The premise is a legal thriller with a body count: Annalise and five of her students get pulled into a murder plot that shakes the university and reroutes all of their lives.
The show is good. It is not great. It scores 6.8 of 10.
Trailer, via Still Watching Netflix.
Annalise Keating and the Keating 5
The engine of How to Get Away with Murder is the relationship between Annalise and the students she favors. The source calls them the Keating 5. Wes Gibbins, played by Alfred Enoch, is the one she feels especially protective of. Jack Falahee’s Connor Walsh is cunning and hard-working, with a confident and seductive “alpha gay” exterior that covers his insecurities. Aja Naomi King’s Michaela Pratt is a high-flying overachiever determined to make a success of her life.
Matt McGorry’s Asher Millstone comes from a privileged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant background and feels left out of the group. Karla Souza’s Laurel Castillo is resourceful, and her distant, wealthy father runs an organized crime empire.
That is a strong ensemble on paper. On screen it holds, mostly because the show keeps the group bound to one another and to Annalise.
Around Annalise sit the adults. Charlie Weber plays Frank Delfino, her fixer and private detective. Liza Weil plays Bonnie Winterbottom, her associate and right-hand woman, with a childhood and early adulthood the show describes as filled with horrifying events. Billy Brown plays Nate Lahey, a Philadelphia police detective having an affair with Annalise when the series opens.
Conrad Ricamora plays Oliver Hampton, a talented computer hacker Connor seduces and later marries. He was recurring in the first two seasons and promoted to the main cast from season three. Rome Flynn plays Gabriel Maddox, a mysterious young man and aspiring civil rights lawyer who arrives at Middleton University eager to investigate Annalise and the Keating 5.
A Body, a Cover-Up, and a Formula
The show’s method is simple and it works. Take a legal case of the week, then run a season-long murder plot underneath it. The students become entangled in that plot. The entanglement changes the course of their lives, which is the promise the synopsis makes and the show largely keeps.
The cost is repetition. By the later seasons the structure is doing the heavy lifting and the characters are reacting to it rather than driving it. How to Get Away with Murder is at its best when Annalise is in a room, working a case or a person. It is at its weakest when it asks you to care about the next layer of the conspiracy.
The Casting Was the Point
ABC built this show deliberately. On January 21, 2014, Matt McGorry was the first announced regular, playing a law student. Through February and March, the rest of the students came in: Aja Naomi King, Jack Falahee, Alfred Enoch and Karla Souza. Katie Findlay was cast as a drug-dealing student, Charlie Weber as a law associate to Professor Keating, Billy Brown as her extra-marital love interest, and Liza Weil as one of her two associates. Tom Verica, a veteran actor and producer, was cast as Professor Keating’s husband.
Then, on February 25, 2014, Shonda Rhimes cast Viola Davis in the lead.
The show kept adding. On August 11, 2014, Alysia Reiner, from Orange Is the New Black, joined as a prosecutor going up against Annalise. On November 4, 2014, Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden came aboard for a recurring role in the back half of season one. On December 15, 2014, Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Cicely Tyson was announced for an episode in that same stretch. Season two brought a family — Caleb, Catherine and Helena Hapstall — plus Kendrick Sampson, and Famke Janssen as a brilliant, revered defense attorney in a multi-episode arc.
- Viola Davis as Annalise Keating
- Billy Brown as Nate Lahey
- Jack Falahee as Connor Walsh
- Aja Naomi King as Michaela Pratt
- Matt McGorry as Asher Millstone
- Charlie Weber as Frank Delfino
- Liza Weil as Bonnie Winterbottom
- Conrad Ricamora as Oliver Hampton
- Rome Flynn as Gabriel Maddox
- Amirah Vann as Tegan Price
What Viola Davis Does With It
Davis carries this. The show gives her a character whose life has been filled with trauma, and she plays the armor and the cracks under it without ever letting you see the seam. When the writing thins out in later seasons, she is the reason to keep watching. That is not a small thing. A 90-episode run on a broadcast network needs a center that holds, and she is it.
The supporting work is uneven but never bad. Weil’s Bonnie is the show’s saddest figure and its most reliable one. Weber’s Frank is a fixer in the literal sense, and the show uses him accordingly. Enoch’s Wes is the emotional entry point for the first three seasons.
The Awards Record
The awards record is the honest summary. Davis won the Emmy, two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, and the Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe. Those are individual honors for a show that was never quite an ensemble triumph.
The Numbers Behind It
- Title: How to Get Away with Murder
- Created by: Peter Nowalk
- Network: ABC
- Run: 6 seasons, 90 episodes
- First aired: September 25, 2014
- Last aired: May 14, 2020
- Genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery
- Metacritic: 68/100
Where It Lands
How to Get Away with Murder is a broadcast legal thriller that understood its own central asset and built everything around her. The murder-plot machinery gets loud and crowded, and the back half of the run leans on twists where it once leaned on character. But the Keating 5 are a real ensemble, and Viola Davis turns a defense attorney with a ruined interior into one of the most watchable leads of the 2010s.
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