Lights! Camera! Argue!

A Harvard professor stars in a verbal free-for-all in Boston "Drink up!" WCVB-TV Producer Claude Pelanne told the studio audience as it waited for the taping to begin. The wine glasses were quickly drained. Pelanne was not preparing the 40-odd guests for some mindless sitcom: he was readying them for Miller's Court, a Boston television show in which the audience matches wits on controversial issues of the law with Arthur Miller, a professor from the Harvard Law School. The result: an uninhibited, often dramatic and sometimes humorous encounter that now is viewed in 100,000 homes in the Boston area every Friday night at 7:30. Encouraged by the success of Miller's Court, WCVB, an ABC network affiliate, is considering syndication of the show.

Only a man of Miller's theatrical talent could make a winner out of the heavy fare that is the show's subject matter. Roaming about a small stage, his hands stabbing the air for emphasis, Miller, 45, goads and needles, at times virtually cross-examines studio guests, who wear large yellow tags giving their first names. Leading discussions on such issues as sex discrimination, the death penalty, and child abuse, Miller elicits one view from one participant, an opposing thesis from another; occasionally, in the best Socratic manner, he lures a guest into contradiction to clarify a specific point. During a recent show on civil disobedience, for example, Miller asked, "Is conscience above the law?" then compared the refusal to pay taxes by military-spending opponents with illegal efforts to prevent school busing by busing foes. "That's confusing the issue," countered one young liberal. It is such disagreement that gives the show its spark. As Miller admonishes the audience before the cameras roll, "If Roger says some idiotic thing, I want Claire to yell at him."

Miller's goal in all this is to educate the layman. Why should the law be mysterious? he asks. An expert in privacy law and court procedure and one of Harvard Law's most popular and entertaining lecturers, Miller slid into television after a friend, Nieman Foundation Curator James Thomson, suggested that WCVB use the professor as a guest host on Sunday Open House, one of the station's many public affairs offerings. Those appearances led to his own show. Miller's Court made its debut last fall. At first the audience was minuscule, but soon interest perked, and the show now attracts 10% of the viewers during its Friday night slotnot enough to set off a mad scramble by advertisers, but a strong performance for a public affairs program. The initial plan for 13 shows has been expanded to include 31. Miller's explanation for his success: "My perverse nature."

To balance comment from the shoot-from-the-hip amateurs, mostly volunteers, in the audience, Miller invites experts on the subject under discussion. They contribute to the debate, and with their guidance, Miller ends the program with an assessment of how the legal system would settle the issue. The show, says Andrea Pollack of Lexington, Mass., a recent studio participant, "brings the law down to a level where we can understand it." Adds Tom Carlson of Medfield, another guest: "Miller gets the man in the street more interested in the law by giving him a chance to get in on the discussion." Miller's talent at sparking wide-open discussion is such that many viewers report switching off their sets after the show and continuing the debate in their living rooms.

Television watchers are not the only ones who have given the professor a warm reception; colleagues, too, have been complimentary, much to his surprise. "I had feared I would be drummed out of the corps," says Miller, who refused to tell associates of the impending series last year. "I was deathly afraid of the legal community's reaction." Instead, he finds colleagues more than eager to serve as his experts. For Miller, it has been the culmination of what he once described as his "Walter Mitty dream to be the Dr. Joyce Brothers of the law."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.