
Watch The Guardian
- TV-PG
- 2001
- 3 Seasons
-
7.4 (5,446)
The Guardian is an American TV series that follows the life of fictional corporate lawyer Nicholas Fallin played by Simon Baker. After several successful years of pursuing his law career and hiding his drug problem, he is arrested. Instead of jail, he is sentenced to 1500 hours of community service as a child advocate at Pittsburgh Legal Services. As he services his sentence, he continues to work as a corporate lawyer for his father who is also an attorney. Besides that juggling act, Fallin struggles with personal issues revolving around his parents' divorce, his mother's death from cancer when he was a child, his feelings of childhood neglect at the hands of his father, temptations of substance abuse, and promiscuity. During his time in community service, he becomes romantically interested in Louise Archer, played by Wendy Moniz, his boss at community service. When her disastrous marriage ends, they develop a complicated and often unhappy romantic relationship. Fallin also works under the supervision of Alvin Masterson the founder of Pittsburgh Legal Services. Masterson has his own issues with substance abuse and inappropriate behavior. His problems create conflict with a board of directors he answers to and contributors he is dependent upon to keep Pittsburgh Legal Services open and running. Besides Fallin's struggle to manage the long hours of two jobs and often trying to be in two places at one time, he frequently finds his community service assignments stir up the anger and resentment he still feels toward his very successful father. He is caught between his inability to forgive his father for sending him to boarding schools after his mother's death, and his fear that his career success comes from trading on the name his father made well-known in legal circles. The role of Nicholas's father, Burton, is played by Dabney Coleman. Alvin Masterson, is played by Alan Rosenberg.