TV Talk at TCA: ‘Tracker,’ ‘Elsbeth’ prepare 2nd seasons; ‘Young Sheldon’ spin-off to premiere

PASADENA, Calif. — CBS enters the 2024-25 TV season this fall from a position of strength thanks to the successful launches of “Tracker” and “Elsbeth” earlier this year.

Justin Hartley stars in “Tracker” as a for-hire hunk who tracks down missing people.

Hartley describes his Colter Shaw character as a hero with a broken family past but not one that haunts him as he builds his own family with friends and colleagues.

“This guy leads with his heart, and we don’t necessarily see that when we think of a character like this,” Hartley said during CBS’s portion of the Television Critics Association summer 2024 press tour. “He’s able to be there and fix all these problems of other people, but there’s this one thing he can’t get out of the way of — (himself) — as smart as he is.”

Executive producer Elwood Reid (“Big Sky,” “Barkskins”) describes “Tracker” as an elevated old-fashioned show. Old-fashioned in that there’s a case of the week, elevated by Shaw’s backstory.

“The key to that is the mix: If we do too much (serialized story), you’re gonna lose people,” Reid said. “I’m always hammering the writers in the room, we don’t want to give too much away about this character. The minute we start to give it away, the mystery around him starts to diminish. I hope when you’re watching, you get a little kernel each week. … We’re gonna be on the air a while and there’s a lot to unravel about this character and the other characters on the show, and you’re gonna see that in the second season.”

Actor Jensen Ackles, who appeared in the first season of “Tracker” as Shaw’s brother, will return for more than one episode in season two.

CBS’s “Columbo”-like murder mystery “Elsbeth” will “shake things up” in season two, according to executive producer Jonathan Tolins.

“We want to have some things from the past come back and haunt our characters,” Tolins said. “What led Elsbeth to leave her life in Chicago? … Now that we’ve established these wonderful relationships, we want to pull the rug out from under them and see what happens. Our show is comfort food, but we don’t want to get too comfortable.”

The Elsbeth character, played by Carrie Preston, first appeared on “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight,” and while producers avoided bringing on any characters from those series in the first season of “Elsbeth,” Tolins said there’s “a strong possibility” some of those characters may appear in season two, though none have been lined up so far.

Networks typically debut their shows in late September, but CBS will hold most of its series for the week of Oct. 14, replaying the network’s strategy from earlier this year when it premiered most of its shows post-strikes following the Super Bowl in mid-February.

“Tracker” will be back at 8:30 p.m. Oct. 27. “Elsbeth” will have its second season premiere at 10 p.m. Oct. 17 with an episode titled “Subscription to Murder.”

And then there’s CBS’s “Young Sheldon” spinoff, “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” (8 p.m. Oct. 17 before the season premiere of “Ghosts”), which follows Georgie (Montana Jordan) and Mandy (Emily Osment) as they strike out on their own with their new baby.

Unlike “Young Sheldon,” which filmed single-camera like a movie, “Georgie & Mandy” will revert to the multicam sitcom format of “Big Bang Theory,” which “Young Sheldon” was a prequel to.

“When we created ‘Young Sheldon,’ we made the switch from multicam to single cam so we had a show that didn’t feel like it was trying to chase its predecessor,” executive producer Steven Molaro said. “With this, we had the opportunity to flip it back to an audience show.”

Executive producer Chuck Lorre said, “These are small stories. It’s a family show. It’s theater. There are no car chases.”

Molaro revealed at least three “Young Sheldon” characters will appear on “Georgie & Mandy”: Georgie’s mom, Mary (Zoe Perry), and Meemaw (Annie Potts) will be in the first episode, and sister Missy (Raegan Ravord) will appear in episode two.

‘Serpent Queen’ returns

Starz’s “The Serpent Queen,” a delicious historical soap about nefarious Catherine de Medici (Samantha Morton), returned for its second season this week, airing new episodes at 8 p.m. Fridays.

This season, actress Minnie Driver joins the cast as Queen Elizabeth I.

During a Starz panel Thursday at the Television Critics Association summer 2024 press tour, Morton said that when her character breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to viewers, she was inspired by “Fleabag” but also the end of “Goodfellas.”

“I’m thinking about Ray Liotta in that end scene,” she said. “The whole film, he’s there and you’re watching the movie and you’re so caught up the first time you see the film. And then he breaks and he starts talking to the camera, and that’s the connection I had with him. He was still the character, but obviously it was just something different. …

“I’m taking you on this journey with me. And I think that’s fascinating that you can have a character from history talk to somebody in 2024. I’m literally talking to the future in that moment. That’s how I feel, anyway. I hope it works.”

For her role as Queen Elizabeth I, Driver said series creator/writer Justin Haythe created “this witty, wily, slightly feral queen. And I hadn’t seen that before in all the books that I’ve read or the pictures that I’ve seen and how I’d imagined her since I was a child learning about her in school.

“These are two businesspeople who meet, and there is no one else like them in the world at that time,” Driver continued. “They are recognizing each other as these two women who are the regents of their respective countries. So it was immensely interesting, because I think they are very different characters.”

There is no historical record that Elizabeth and Catherine ever met, but Haythe said that didn’t matter for dramatic purposes.

“We had a principle where if you could prove it happened, we were obliged to it,” he said. “At the same time, if you can’t prove it didn’t happen, we can do it. So Elizabeth and Catherine, there’s no substantiated meeting historically, but nobody can prove they didn’t do it off the books.”