TV Talk: When is a reboot not a reboot? When it’s CBS’s ‘Matlock’

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

Note: This column contains spoilers for the premiere episode of CBS’s “Matlock” that aired last month.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Despite perpetual mocking, with Grandpa Simpson wailing “Matlock!” in “The Simpsons” episodes from the late 1980s/early 1990s, there was a reason the courtroom procedural starring Andy Griffith ran for nine seasons: It offered a cozy mystery, long before the term was coined, with a likable star in the title role.

So color me more than a little surprised when my 10-year-old son attentively watched the first two episodes of CBS’s new “Matlock” with me, then asked to see more episodes, leading him to cheer, “Matlock! Matlock! Matlock!” when a critics’ screener of the third episode reached its courtroom climax.

Clearly the appeal of the original “Matlock” extends to CBS’s seeming reboot that is NOT a reboot. The new “Matlock” averaged more than 7 million viewers in its preview last month, the best non-post-Super Bowl debut ratings for a CBS series in almost six years. That first episode repeats at 9 p.m. Thursday, with the show’s second episode airing at 9 p.m. Oct. 17.

Anyone who watched the premiere learned Madeline “Matty” Matlock (Kathy Bates) is not who she tells her new law firm colleagues she is. She’s using the Matlock alias as she tries to learn which lawyer was responsible for hiding documents in a case that could have taken opioids off the market 10 years earlier, saving the lives of thousands, including Matty’s daughter.

While Matty portrays herself to her co-workers as a slightly doddering septua­genarian who has to go back to work as a lawyer to pay her bills, it turns out her real name is Madeline “Grammie” Kingston and she’s wealthy enough to have a chauffeur who drives her home to her husband (Sam Anderson) and the grandson (Aaron D. Harris) she’s raising.

Reconceived by “Jane the Virgin” creator Jennie Snyder Urman, this new “Matlock” falls squarely in the elevated procedurals genre with a new case-of-the-week each episode as well as the ongoing, serialized storyline of Matty’s efforts to take down the unscrupulous lawyer at her firm.

“She comes in with one agenda … and what she thought was a quite simple mission, which is, ‘I’m going to figure this out, and then I’m going to exit the stage left,’ ” Snyder Urman said during a July visit to the “Matlock” set on the Paramount Pictures lot. “She’s suddenly realizing that these friendships she’s forming are a lot deeper. She’s suddenly realizing that these are people who are relying on her, and that makes it more complicated. … Then the most surprising thing to her is how relevant she feels and how good the work feels and how she’s making a difference again and she is important to the world. … That’s the surprise and the wish fulfillment and the hope of the series.”

The show’s second episode teases viewers’ memories of the original series in its opening moments — no spoilers here — and a portion of the plot revolves around a mistake Matty made in the premiere episode when she said the original “Matlock” aired from 1984-92. The original “Matlock” aired on NBC from 1984-92, but it continued until 1995 after moving to ABC.

Was that error in the first episode intentional or caught later and used to drive the stakes in Episode 2?

“It was an error that I wrote originally in the script that I could have corrected,” Snyder Urman said. “But then I thought, that’s going to be useful because Matty is tracking everything. … That’s just a tiny example of how much she has to track all the time. And it’s also a nice way into the meta storytelling for the second episode, and I knew it would help me do a little table setting.”

Another oddity with the new “Matlock” that may be apparent only to the most eagle-­eyed TV junkies: Like the title, the show’s law office set is also recycled.

“This is the first set that I’ve ever worked on that has been repurposed three different ways,” explained “Matlock” production designer Adam Rowe. “For those of you familiar with CBS, this was the hospital in (the 2022 medical drama) ‘Good Sam.’ And it was used (as the makeup company office) on ‘Glamourous,’ which was on Netflix (in 2023).”

“Good Sam” and “Glamourous” filmed in Toronto, where the set was originally built. CBS shot the “Matlock” pilot in Toronto and, when “Matlock” got picked up for series, producers had the set dismantled and shipped to the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. There was just one problem: The Paramount soundstage was considerably smaller than the one in Toronto.

“We’re actually seeing a set that has been cut in half,” Rowe explained. “It was quite a bit bigger. When you go toward the reception area, it went another 90 feet in that direction.”

For actress Skye P. Marshall, who plays Olympia, Matty’s boss at the law firm, starring in “Matlock” offers a daily sense of déjà vu: She worked on this set previously as Dr. Lex Trulie on “Good Sam.”

“Those are the same stairs, these are the same hallways,” Marshall said while standing in Olympia’s office, which was a patient room on “Good Sam.” “When ‘Good Sam’ got canceled, I had no idea that the set would follow me here. … This same bend (in the hallway) where I used to chase (‘Good Sam’ star) Sophia Bush all the time, that’s where Kathy Bates is chasing me.”

As Matty chases down the lawyer she holds responsible for her daughter’s death, Snyder Urman offered assurances that the mystery will not drag on interminably.

“We will definitely find out who did what” by the end of the first season, she said. “When that mystery is going to be solved, something else will be launched, and there will be tentacles. But I very much believe that you’ve got to give the audience that satisfaction.”