Cupertino CBS – CBS’s new legal drama ‘Cupertino’ navigates the complex, often chaotic reality of modern Silicon Valley through the lens of a boutique law firm, offering a surprisingly nuanced look at our AI-driven world.
The pilot episode of ‘Cupertino’ is a hurdle, a slightly unmoored introduction to a world that quickly finds its footing. Set in the high-stakes. high-paranoia landscape of modern Silicon Valley. the CBS procedural manages to transform the anxiety of our current digital age into something unexpectedly sharp. Created by Robert and Michelle King—the duo behind ‘The Good Wife. ‘ ‘The Good Fight. ‘ ‘Elsbeth. ‘ and ‘Evil’—the series operates with a level of sophistication rarely associated with traditional 20-episode network runs.
At the center of the story is Price Siffre. a scrappy law firm founded by Michael Price. played by Mike Colter. and Olivia Siffre. played by Rachel Keller. Accompanied by investigator Christy Palladino. played by Ella Stiller. the trio abandons a nefarious AI company in the pilot to spend the season taking on ‘the big seven’ fictionalized tech giants. The cast finds its rhythm through a series of cameos and recurring roles. including a ‘Girls5eva’ reunion featuring Renée Elise Goldsberry as a rival and Busy Philipps as a character reminiscent of a fun-loving. occasionally intoxicated MacKenzie Scott.
While the show tackles specific. recognizable phenomena—Zizians. Polymarket. the ‘looksmaxxing’ obsession attributed to Jeff Bezos. and the controversy surrounding OpenAI’s use of Scarlett Johansson’s voice—it avoids becoming a simple procedural like the short-lived ‘CSI: Cyber.’ Instead. the Kings use the expansive. 20-episode season to build a claustrophobic. interconnected ecosystem. This world is populated by data brokers. rationalists. exhausted AI trainers. developers hiding ASCII jokes in code. gerontocratic judges. and the contractors who build the bunkers for the ultra-wealthy.
The series navigates these complex themes with a sense of ‘peppy paranoia.’ It acknowledges that in an era of deepfakes and constant surveillance. suspicion is not just a character quirk—it is a rational response to reality. Even as the show leans into the anthropomorphizing of bots. it avoids delivering clean. easy moral judgments. opting instead for a subtle exploration of what we should actually fear in the age of AI.
This landscape of uncertainty is a marked departure from the ‘tech-savvy’ legal dramas of the Obama era. In 2013. the Kings’ ‘The Good Wife’ was praised by *Wired* and *BuzzFeed* for its nuanced handling of Bitcoin and NSA spying. ‘Cupertino’ attempts to replicate that feat for the 2026 climate, where tech backlash has become a dominant cultural narrative. While other recent projects like ‘The Social Reckoning. ‘ ‘You Can See Everything. ‘ ‘Artificial. ‘ ‘Musk. ‘ ‘The Altruists’ (arriving this November). and ‘The Audacity’ (released this past summer) approach the subject with varying levels of sermonizing. ‘Cupertino’ aims for a different audience. It manages to translate the finer points of the Hugging Face hack and the daily grind of digital exploitation into something that resonates. blending intelligence with a surprising remainder of joy.
Cupertino CBS Robert and Michelle King Big Tech Silicon Valley AI drama Mike Colter Rachel Keller TV review