Matlock (2024) and Night Court (2023)

Two reboots for the price of one.

Matlock (2024)

Kathy Bates does a great job with whatever she’s in, so when I saw the trailer with her headlining the reboot, I was very intrigued, and after the first episode, I was hooked by the premise: Bates plays Madeline Kingston, a brilliant, wealthy, elderly attorney who pretends to be Madeline Matlock so she can play the unassuming, under-the-radar, eldery attorney, so she can infiltrate a law office to gather dirt on their nefarious past deeds as a form of revenge. I thought the premise was great. It’s more like a spinoff than a reboot. It’s a brilliant way to reboot a series without crapping all over the original.

While the premise is solid, the rest of the show suffers from pacing and writing issues. The secret life of Madeline Kingston was revealed at the end of the first episode. I think the show would have benefited by drawing out the spycraft intrigue of the secret identity for one or two more episodes before revealing it.

The episode plots follow the original Matlock formula: Matlock uses her unassuming defense attorney skills to prove her client’s true innocence while simulataneously bringing the real culprits to justice. However, many of the storylines are contrived and flimsy, in addition to having a number of Current Issues in every episode. The writing isn’t very tight, and the main storyline—Matlock secretly investigating the attorneys she works for—is always relegated to the B-plot.

Overall, I would have loved to see this show as a limited series on Netflix or if it were written by HBO. Skip the case-of-the-week altogether, focus on the main plot, and wrap it up on a high note; however, I suspect CBS will try to drag this out too long. I’ll finish this season, but depending on how it ends, I may not continue with season two.

Watch: Maybe.

Re-watch: No.

Night Court (2023)

I was excited to see John Larroquette reprise his character from the original show, and it was quite the treat to see him slip into his character so easily.

There isn’t much to say on this one except that the show has its moments, but there aren’t many. It ends up being a nostagia trip just watching for Dan Fielding or other characters from the original, like Bob Wheeler (Brent Spiner), or a guest star from Big Bang Theory. Unfortunately, with so many deaths of the original cast, we don’t get many cameos.

However, I did enjoy the season two homage to Larroquette playing Maltz in Star Trek 3 by dressing Dan up as a Klingon to hide him from a stalker.

Watch: meh.