James Woods’ ‘Shark’ Was Canceled Too Soon (Just Like Its Lead)

James Woods’ Sebastian Stark operated under three simple rules.

• One: Trial is war. Second place is death.
• Two: Truth is relative. Pick one that works.
• Three: In a jury trial, there are only 12 opinions that matter. Yours is not one of them.

Sounds like a man born to thrive amongst the sludge that is the D.C. swamp.

Stark was the central figure of CBS’ “Shark,” a 2006-2008 legal procedural that gave the chameleon-like actor a shot at leading man TV status.

World famous courtroom sketch artist Mona Shafer Edwards appeared as herself in my series, SHARK. She’s a wonderful person with the keenest eye and the sharpest pen. I recommend her book, CAPTURED!, a fascinating firsthand view into the minds of the guilty and the innocent… pic.twitter.com/3Dl3QrrNud

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) March 15, 2019

Woods stars as Stark, an uber-successful defense attorney — his success is needlessly, but humorously confirmed by the reveal of his own private courtroom in his home. Woods’ character is hated by most police and prosecutors for his success rate and his braggadocious attitude.

Stark finds himself turning in the big paychecks for the life of a prosecutor after he faces a moral dilemma. He successfully defends a client who proceeds to kill his wife and expects Stark to save him again.

“Shark” followed the beats that every CBS procedural debuting in 2006 needed to, but creator Ian Biederman and no doubt producer Woods — filled each hour with more flavor than exposition. Stark has a teenage daughter — played by Danielle Panabaker — who challenges his bachelor lifestyle and dedication to long hours after she moves in with him.

Woods himself also delivered some of his strongest work in a role that feels like a suit tailor-made for him.

Sebastian Stark had the cutthroat opportunism of “Videodrome’s” Max Renn and the performative sarcasm of “Hercules’” Hades. He mixed that with an evolving morality audiences hadn’t seen a lot of from Hollywood’s go-to movie villain.

“Shark” went into production with quite a bit of weight behind it beyond the Emmy-winning Woods. Brian Grazer, longtime producing partner of Ron Howard, was working behind the scenes and he managed to bring in Spike Lee as the pilot’s director.

The “Do the Right Thing” auteur was fresh off the success of the Grazer-produced “Inside Man.” That film proved his biggest commercial hit and it helped explain why he would direct an hour of television for CBS.

“It’s the long arm of Imagine and Brian Grazer,” Lee said at the time, according to Variety. “We had a very good experience on ‘Inside Man.’”

What also appeared to be working in the show’s favor was the fact that Woods was friends with then-CBS head Les Moonves. That, however, did not save the show from getting the axe after two seasons. Woods chalked up the failure to the 2007-2008 WGA strike and time slot changes by the network.

Does anyone remember the short-lived series Shark starring James Woods? pic.twitter.com/Ehu28MLLQZ

— Kaiser Cowabunga (@KaiserBunga) April 16, 2022

“I think probably the strike was as devastating to our future as it was to many other shows. It seems, in retrospect, not to be a very fruitful endeavor for a lot of people to be on strike. But particularly on us because our time slot had been moved against football for the first half of the season. And then we should have emerged and shown our strength in the second half of the season when the strike happened, some never got a chance to prove our mettle,” he said after the cancellation, according to the LA Times.

“Shark” opens strong with Woods and Lee firing on all cylinders and giving a cinematic scope and pace to network television. Woods gets plenty to play off of, working especially well with Jeri Ryan, who played a district attorney in the show’s first season and then teamed with Stark in the second.

While “Shark” received a premature death, the show’s commitment to being more cinematic and cumulative than other procedurals pays off in providing a multi-part story that gave the series finale a sense of actual resolution.

Billy Campbell appeared in three episodes as Wayne Robert Callison, a serial killer who closely studied Stark’s legal career. Callison acts as his own defense attorney in “Wayne’s World” where he gets the chance to question a woman he brutally attacked.

It seems far-fetched, but hey, it’s CBS and it works.

After matching wits with Stark, Wayne returns in “Wayne’s World 2: Revenge of the Shark” where he’s now an acquitted killer with a bestselling book all about outwitting Stark. Woods and Campbell play off each other like seasoned musicians with each pushing the other to the limit.

Woods showed a man breaking down and crossing lines, convinced it’s for the right reason, while Campbell captured Wayne’s icy, yet charming shell.

The tit-for-tat culminates in the series finale, “Wayne’s World 3: Killer Shark,” where things get more personal and desperate for each character. Though the ending teased more could come between the pair, the three episodes act as a strong trilogy representing what could have just been a mail-it-in legal drama.

Speaking after the show’s cancellation, Woods said the series did a tremendous amount for him personally. What he partly meant was it came at a vulnerable time in his life.

Woods was filming the second episode of “Shark” when he learned his younger brother, Michael J. Woods, passed away. Production shut down for three weeks. The death came just days after the brothers completed a cross-country trip together.

The third episode of “Shark,” titled “Dr. Feelbad,” was dedicated “in loving memory” to Woods’s brother.

“That was their idea. When they first showed it to me, I really was very shocked and just so moved by it. It broke my heart. I never thought I’d think of him in terms of ‘loving memory’ — that’s for sure. But it was very thoughtful,” Woods told the Seattle Times while still in the midst of shooting “Shark.”

Woods has explained in recent years how his political activism hurt his Hollywood career. It’s hard to believe someone with such an eclectic and lengthy filmography would be so quickly cast aside but that appears to be the state of things since his agent dropped him in 2018, openly because of politics, according to Woods.

The actor’s last sizable live-action role was in 2014’s “Jamesy Boy.”

The actor has reinvented himself while still remaining as outspoken as ever on X. Woods took to writing an album with Shooter Jennings and helped produce Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” — a fact he was asked to keep quiet during awards season because of, you guessed it, politics.

The actor did recount turning down one gig after being dropped by his representation and moving behind the curtain. Woods slapped down an offer to take part in “Family Guy’s” Resistance porn episode where Peter Griffin physically fights President Donald Trump.

I was recently offered another #FamilyGuy episode and reluctantly turned it down for similar reasons. It was so mean-spirited, so totally political, and (worst crime of all) simply not funny. The rabid hatred of conservative values has ruined comedy. #Sad https://t.co/WRDV1s7Bvn

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) April 30, 2018

It’s unlikely we’re going to see Woods become as prolific in front of the camera as he once was — and who the hell would want to after producing “Oppenheimer?” “Shark,” however, is some of his last and finest work as a performer and proof he could do a lot more than just play colorful bad guys.

Woods commits to the Stark role so well that a CBS procedural somehow felt like the culmination of the career of an artist who cut his teeth for decades with cinema’s finest directors. Think  Sergio Leone, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and even Silent Bob himself, Kevin Smith.

Sure, “Shark” was canceled too soon, but Woods didn’t disappoint with his time at the plate.

Zachary Leeman is the author of the novel “Nigh” from publisher Gilded Masque and has covered politics and culture for LifeZette, Mediaite, and others.