Showtime’s ‘Your Honor’ closely follows Israeli original ‘Kvodo’

“Your Honor,” a new Showtime limited series starring Bryan Cranston, is based on Yes Studio’s “Kvodo,” which screened in Israel in 2017.

“It’s been a long long road getting here, but extremely thankful that everyone’s tremendous efforts have paid off and Showtime’s ‘Your Honor’ — the adaptation of our award-winning Israeli series ‘Kvodo’ — is being embraced so warmly by viewers and is resonating widely with audiences; this is why we all do what we do,” wrote Yes Studio managing director Danna Stern on Facebook.

Cranston is best known for his Emmy-winning role in “Breaking Bad” as a high school chemistry teacher who finds out he has cancer and goes into a meth-making business to pay his medical debts, a situation that quickly spirals downward when he partners with the wrong people.

“Your Honor” premiered on December 6, closely following the original “Kvodo” storyline, with Cranston a New Orleans judge trying to cover up his son’s asthma-induced accidental hit-and-run killing of a crime lord’s son.

The entire plot of “Your Honor,” which is executive produced by Robert and Michelle King, the creators of legal thriller “The Good Wife,” is complicated by the fact that Cranston and his son are in mourning for their wife and mother, who recently died, seemingly an accidental victim of street violence.

The original Yes Studio series, “Kvodo,” followed the same storyline, featuring a father and son, although the relationship between the Israeli father and son is more fractured and fraught.