This message contains spoilers ahead for the premiere of the new CBS drama Matlockwhich is now streaming on Paramount+.

Normally a spoiler warning like the one above shouldn’t be necessary for a show like Matlocka reboot of the Andy Griffith legal drama that ran for nearly a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. If you’re old enough, you may have seen the Griffith version, in which he played lawyer Ben Matlock, whose old age and common demeanor left his opponents unprepared for his brilliant legal tactics. Or maybe you only know the title as a running gag in the early years of The Simpsonswhere it was the only thing that brought joy to Abe Simpson and his neighbors in the nursing home. Or maybe you don’t know the name at all, but you see that it’s a legitimate show starring Kathy Bates — who, at 76, is more than a decade older than Griffith was when he first played Matlock — on the CBS television network, and assume you can fill in the blanks from there.

Well, hold on a minute, my friends! Because I’m here to tell you that this new Matlock is not what you think! Well, most of the time it is. And then in some ways it is very, very, terribly No, not much.

For much of the pilot episode, the series does indeed seem to be a gender-flipped take on the old character, albeit an oddly self-aware one. Bates’ Madeline “Matty” Matlock always introduces herself as “Matlock, like in the old TV show,”

Editors’ Choice This was the same approach used by the charming but short-lived Disney+ show Doogie Kamealoha, MD whose underage doctor heroine was nicknamed “Doogie” because other characters had watched the TV show Doogie Howser, MD(whose run happens to overlap a bit with the original Matlock ). Oddly enough,

The Simpsons is never mentioned here, although some of Matty’s coworkers, such as Jason Ritter as Olympia’s ex-husband Julian, are just the right age to understand the reference that way. And if the new Matlock were content to be that, it could probably be just fine for itself. Bates is just so charismatic and lively and the same CBS audience that has remained Blue Blood 14 seasons on the air would probably be satisfied with another formulaic drama built around an aging character who keeps proving he’s still got it. The pilot also contains references to other 80s showsThe A-Team

And Cheersbecause everyone involved knows who the target group is.

She also has experience as a lead actor in a legal drama, although it wasn’t exactly a good one: Harry’s Law an early 2010s series by David E. Kelley, in which Bates ran a law firm out of an old shoe store. Her assistant insisted on continuing to sell shoes between legal cases. But this Matlock was created by Jennie Snyder Urman, whose terrific CW series Jane the Virgin was never content to be confined to his

formula, constantly switching between parody and the genuine article. (One of Urman’s tasks between Jane and this was developing the CW Enchanted reboot, whose stars coincidentally include an actress named Madeleine Mantock.) While she could do a perfectly straight-up remake of the Griffith show, she has something else in mind. So here we go…

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The end of the

Matlock

The pilot reveals some key points:

1. Madeline Matlock is not actually Madeline Matlock, but Madeline Kingston. 2. Madeline Kingston is a wealthy woman with a long and successful legal career. She is not the anonymous worker bee she portrays herself to her new employers. 3. Madeline Kingston joined the company because she blames it for her daughter’s death from an opioid overdose. She is now plotting an elaborate revenge plot against one or more of Olympia, Julian, and Julian’s father, Senior (Beau Bridges). It’s okay if you need to take a moment to reread the last one. It’s a lot, I know. So what we have is not exactly a

Matlock remake, but a kind of conspiracy thriller in which the heroine pretends to be the main character in aMatlock

remake while secretly adding items to her murder board. Because of course this new Matlock now has a murder board.

Now, what Urman has done isn’t all that unusual in the modern IP Is Everything television landscape. Simple premises are rarely considered sufficient, no matter how successful various brands were the first time around with that approach. NBC’s attempt to Quantum Leap For example, couldn’t be content with telling stories about a time traveler who fixes the lives of the people he gets to impersonate for a few days. Instead, a third to a half of each episode had to be devoted to what the team behind the time travel was doing back home, various conspiracies and bits of franchise lore, etc. Everything had to be made more complicated, with more characters and storylines, whether it’s to lighten the workload of the main cast (to be fair, Bates is 76 and has said this will be her last role) or out of fear that viewers with short attention spans will have to constantly jump from idea to idea.

That said, Urman happens to be much better than most of her peers at integrating seemingly contradictory ideas, genres, and tones. For large parts of each episode,

Matlock delivers exactly what the title promises. While Matty conspires with her husband and grandson to bring down these supposedly bad lawyers, she also makes a largely good-faith effort to join Olympia’s team and help with their cases. She talks her way into uncovering evidence, reassures clients and opponents alike, and otherwise fully commits to the role she plays. These stories aren’t classics of the genre—several times in the three episodes I watched, I had to go back to my notes to remind myself what was happening in one of the cases—but they are meant to be Kathy Bates delivery systems, and they do that well enough.Trending