• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

From the prolific pen of John Grisham comes another adaptation of one of his thrillers set in the no-holds-barred world of Big Legal.

This one is a TV adaptation of his 1995 novel The Rainmaker coming to USA Network on Friday and then to co-owned Peacock a week later.

While Stephen King’s tally of movie and TV adaptations of his novels probably represents a record that will never be broken, Grisham has more than held his own. 

This new TV series comes 30 years after the novel was published and 28 years since the movie adaptation of the novel, also titled “The Rainmaker.”

It must be really something. I envision Grisham just sitting there in his kitchen eating a sandwich one day when the phone rings and his agent tells him, “Hey, NBCUniversal wants to make a TV show out of The Rainmaker. You game?” To which Grisham replies, “Sure, whatever,” and returns to his lunch.

Eight feature films were made from Grisham novels between 1993 and 2003, including one -- “The Gingerbread Man” in 1998 -- that was adapted from a manuscript Grisham had discarded.

The others, in order, were “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief,” “The Client,” “A Time to Kill,” “The Chamber,” “The Rainmaker” and “Runaway Jury.”

They were big movies with casts of A-list stars. “The Rainmaker” cast included Matt Damon in the starring role of the young, brilliant attorney Rudy Baylor; plus Claire Danes, Jon Voight, Mary Kay Place, Mickey Rourke, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, Roy Scheider, Virginia Madsen and Hollywood Golden Age star Teresa Wright.

By contrast, the cast of USA Network’s new “Rainmaker” will be familiar to almost nobody. 

This is not to denigrate them, but just to point out that the Grisham movies were so much bigger in an old Hollywood kind of way -- Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman in “The Firm,” Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington in “The Pelican Brief,” Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in “The Client,” Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey in “A Time to Kill.”

You get the picture. On the big screen, the big stars helped to elevate the movies and heighten the urgency of their storylines. On the small screen, not so much. 

The TV version of “The Rainmaker” follows the same basic outline of the movie.

A teenage boy dies at a local Charleston hospital and his grieving mother cannot accept the hospital’s explanation for his death. She is certain there was foul play.

The hospital corporation is represented by the biggest, most ruthless law firm in town, headed by John Slattery of “Mad Men.”

Young attorney Rudy Baylor (played by Milo Cunningham, photo above), having just been fired on his first day at the big firm, is forced to take up a job at a plucky, two-person firm housed in a former fast-food restaurant.

Rudy picks up the mourning mom as his first client, which will set him on a collision course with the powerful firm that fired him. 

It is a fine scenario for a TV courtroom drama, but it is in no way special or unique, and neither is “The Rainmaker.”

Not that there is anything wrong with it, but “The Rainmaker” plays like a thousand TV lawyer shows you have seen before. Where is Tom Cruise when you need him?