When Does Matlock Episode 2 Air? And What Can You Expect?
When will Matlock‘s title character help crack her next case? Brace yourself for a bit of a wait.
CBS’ not-a-reboot legal drama got a special sneak preview on Sunday, Sept. 22, so as to enjoy the strong lead-in from the 60 Minutes season opener and in doing do build some word-of-mouth buzz ahead of its regular time slot premiere.
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The scrutinized scheduling, or at least Phase 1 of it, clearly worked, seeing as Matlock‘s same-day audience of 7.73 million total viewers marks CBS’ most-watched series launch (not airing after a Super Bowl) in more than five years, since Luke Mitchell’s The Code drew north of 8 million on April 9, 2019 (following an episode of NCIS).
With Live+3 playback, Matlock enjoyed a 38% lift, growing its premiere audience to 10.67 million viewers — again, a five-year high for a CBS series launch.
TVLine readers gave the Matlock premiere an average grade of “A,” with 95% of respondents planning to stay tuned for Episode 2. Thing is, that second episode won’t hit your screen until Thursday, Oct. 17 at 9/8c, when Matlock settles into its regular time slot between Ghosts and Elsbeth.
In the meantime, the first episode of Matlock — which was filmed way back in spring 2023 and whose closing twist got everyone talking — is streaming on Paramount+, and CBS encores are scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 8 and Thursday, Oct. 10 (both nights at 9 pm).
Matlock stars Emmy and Academy Award winner Kathy Bates as, the official synopsis told us, “Madeline ‘Matty’ Matlock, a brilliant septuagenarian who achieved success in her younger years and decides to rejoin the work force at a prestigious law firm where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases.” The series regular cast also includes Skye P. Marshall (Good Sam), Jason Ritter (Parenthood), Leah Lewis and David Del Rio.
Matty painted herself to new law firm colleagues as the broke widow of a cheating husband, and caretaker for her late daughter’s brat of a son. But in truth — series premiere spoiler alert! — Matty’s real name is Madeleine Kingston, she is wealthy with a doting, alive husband and loving grandson, and she is out to infiltrate Jacobson Moore so as to find out who there was responsible for helping a Big Pharma client keep in the marketplace opiates that her daughter Ellie died from. Matty adopted the surname of “Matlock” (as in the folksy TV show) so as to charm people and lower their defenses, and grandson Alfie has been backstopping her bogus identity.
Matlock resumes its freshman run on Thursday, Oct. 17, with the episode “Rome, in a Day,” in which Olympia and “Team You Three” (Matty, Billy and Sarah) take on a lawsuit involving a developmentally delayed teenager whose family claims he’s been wrongly accused of murder. In that episode’s cold open, a factual error that Matty made when talking about the TV show Matlock in the premiere will come back to haunt her.
Then, in Episode 3, Yael Groblas (Jane the Virgin) begins a recurring run as a jury consultant/”human lie detector” who will prove to be quite an obstacle for Madeline “Matlock.”
All told, Matty “has specific missions in each episode, things that she has to figure out that are going to get her closer to realizing something” about her late daughter’s death, showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman (Jane the Virgin) told TVLine. “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.”
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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