CBS’ Matlock Just Revealed Its Wild, Not-a-Reboot Twist — Grade the Premiere, Get Scoop on What’s Next
The following contains spoilers from the Sept. 22 premiere of CBS’ Matlock, which will return in its regular, Thursdays-at-9 time slot on Oct. 17.
Nearly 17 months after being ordered to series, CBS’ Matlock not-a-reboot finally got to reveal its big twist.
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Debuting Sunday night in a special time slot, Matlock stars Emmy and Academy Award winner Kathy Bates as Madeline “Matty” Matlock, a septuagenarian who uses her “invisible” older woman status to procure intel on a pending court case and in doing so finagle herself a job at the prestigious Jacobson Moore law firm in New York.
And yes, Matty is well aware of how her surname evokes the famous TV lawyer played by Andy Griffith on the NBC/ABC series of the same name, from 1986 to 1995.
Assigned to Olympia (Good Sam‘s Skye P. Marshall), a senior attorney and onetime rainmaker for the firm, Matty works alongside younger associates Billy (David Del Rio) and Sarah (Leah Lewis), all the while alluding to her woes as the broke widow of a cheating, gambling husband, and caretaker for her late daughter’s brat of a son.
After coming through with a clutch witness to bolster Olympia’s latest case, Matty turned down celebratory drinks with Billy and Sarah, to instead catch her bus home. Thing is, Matty hopped off the bus after just one stop, then ducked into an alley where a limo driver awaited “Mrs. Kingston.” Matty was then driven to a large, handsome home, where she was greeted by her very-much-alive husband and her doting grandson, Alfie. It was then revealed, bit by bit, that Alfie had backstopped his grandma’s new identity with a LinkedIn profile and such, and how “Matlock” was chosen both a tribute to his late mom Ellie’s favorite TV show, and to disarm Matty’s coworkers with its folksy familiarity.
Avenging Ellie’s death, which was due to opiates not taken off the market soon enough by Jacobson Moore’s big pharma client, is Madeline’s true mission — and Olympia, Olympia’s ex-husband Julian (Jason Ritter), and firm founder Senior (Beau Bridges) are each in her crosshairs….
TVLine spoke with Matlock showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman, formerly of Jane the Virgin, about this atypical manner of using IP to launch a new show, and what Matty’s mission will look like. (With additional reporting by Keisha Hatchett)
TVLINE | Did any version of this show exist without the Matlock element? Was it ever just “crafty older woman infiltrates the law firm that did her daughter wrong”?
No. I had been working on other original pieces, and then I was thinking about what I was going to produce as a producer, and I thought of the Matlock title. I really love legal shows. Then, when I found out that [NCIS: Los Angeles vet/Matlock executive producer] Eric Christian Olsen had [the rights], he was like, “Yeah, you guys can join if you write it.”
I have learned to never say yes or no on gut. I have to take a walk and think. And when I took a walk, I started to think of, you know, Andy Griffith, who he was…. I write things that are female-driven, there’s no secret about that, so this would of course be an older woman. And then I started to think about how an older woman is very different from an older man in society. And that started to spool out into other ideas about this character, and what she would be doing, and how it all sort of unfolded around Matlock, because that was the piece of material I was being offered.
TVLINE | I think what you wound up with was a clever and unexpected approach to IP.
I appreciate that.
TVLINE | When this was first announced what must feel like two years ago for you, the reaction was, “A Matlock reboot? With Kathy Bates? What, is she his daughter, a granddaughter…?” You must have been biting your tongue, holding onto this twist.
Yeah, it’s been tricky, because there’s obviously a lot of things that are like, “Why do we need this? Eyeroll!” And all of the Simpsons memes and stuff. But I knew what the show was, and I knew that people would see a screener and understand it was a different take, and what that specific take was. That was an interesting exercise for me, lulling the audience with all the contours of something familiar, and then revealing that we’re going to give them something totally different. And that’s what Matty is doing at the law firm, saying to everyone, “I’m just this old lady and my name is Matlock.”
TVLINE | But she also could have used the name “Perry Mason,” theoretically. Though he wasn’t very cuddly. He was a more stern.
Totally. Whereas Matlock was this folksy, older lawyer from the South.
TVLINE | We just saw Mrs. Kingston’s “murder board” with the three photos. As the season unfolds, will she alternately side-eye Julian, Olympia and Senior…?
Well, what happens is she has specific missions in each episode, things that she has to figure out that are going to get her closer to realizing something. Sometimes you know what her mission is, and sometimes you’re surprised and don’t realize it at the end of the episode, because I want to always have that card-flip. It’s not easy corroborating something from 14 years ago, but she has working theories. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes there are twists, and by the end of this first season, it will be totally solved.
TVLINE | And Yael Grobglas (Jane the Virgin), her upcoming character will be a big problem for Matty?
She’s a jury consultant, so she’s kind of like a human lie detector. She’s good at reading body language, telling if people are lying, so putting that person in front of Matty is going to pressure her. We were thinking, “What is the most terrifying thing that could be in Matty’s life?” And it would be somebody that is skilled at detecting the truth.
TVLINE | How does Matty’s grandson Alfie play into her mission? What is she learning from him, and what can he teach her?
I’ve been conscious to not make our Matty a Luddite and not able to use any tech. She is a 75-year-old woman in the world who knows how to email and knows how to FaceTime…. [For her and Alfie] it is about this thing that they do together. And it becomes about healing their relationships with his mother, this cathartic thing. The technical skills and the things that he teaches her in terms of tech and all of that is important, but it’s really the shared mission that these two people have, and what they’re both trying to heal, and how they’re trying to do that together, and what the relationship becomes for both of them. The person that’s missing between Matty and her grandson is her daughter, so them coming together is creating a space where they can heal from that wound.
Want scoop on Matlock, or for any other TV show ? Email [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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