Future TV reboots ought to take a web page out of Matlock’s guide.
The reimagined model of the Nineteen Eighties traditional Andy Griffith automobile is without doubt one of the greatest hits of the 2024-2025 season.
One in all its promoting factors is that it’s not a real reboot, however there’s much more to what makes it a hit than that — and writers of different potential remakes and reimaginings may be taught quite a bit from it.
Matlock Is A lot Extra Than That Premiere Twist
Matlock Season 1 Episode 1 set the Web ablaze with its large reveal that Madeline Matlock wasn’t a relative of Ben Matlock — she was a fan who took his title as a result of she was on a mission.
Everybody was enthusiastic about this new concept.
The viewers liked it, and critics rushed to be the primary to debate how this reboot was completely different from all of the others.
These have been all legitimate factors, however to ensure that future TV reboots to achieve success, we have to get past that preliminary shock and talk about the true causes Matlock is a hit.
If the one thrilling factor about it have been the twist that it was solely pretending to be a remake of the unique, the vitality everybody has for the collection would have burned out a very long time in the past.
That will be a gimmick, and Matlock is excess of that.
I Fell For Matlock As a result of Its Core Is Addressing Social Inequities
The factor Matlock does finest, apart from having twist after twist all through the season, is discuss essential points to its viewers.
The authorized drama may simply have been a one-note present a couple of feminine model of Ben Matlock.
As an alternative, it created this three-dimensional character who shares along with her namesake a deep love of justice and willingness to struggle for the underdog.
Madeline is, in some ways, a tragic determine, modified without end by her daughter’s demise, however even that acquainted trope isn’t dealt with in a superficial method.
Madeline addresses issues like how laborious it’s to be a lady in a previously male-dominated subject like legislation, how unattainable it was for her to stability her work and household wants when her daughter was small, and the way these points contributed to her daughter’s drug abuse and demise.
In brief, Madeline is a fancy, three-dimensional character in her personal proper relatively than a carbon copy of Andy Griffith’s character who occurs to be feminine.
I used to be reluctant to provide this collection an opportunity as a result of I assumed that’s what it might be.
Loads of reboots are uninspired.
They really feel like fanfiction by which another person takes over the position, and typically, they even reuse tales from the unique model.
Matlock would have labored simply as nicely if it weren’t a reboot in any respect, which is one thing I by no means anticipated.
It additionally takes on all these social justice-type tales I like.
It combines Ellie’s ongoing battle for justice with circumstances of the week by which Madelne and Olympia arise for people who find themselves being trampled by others or by an overwhelmingly advanced authorized system.
Matlock Didn’t Want To Be A Reboot, So Why Was It?
I’ve typically questioned what Matlock could be like with out its connection to the Andy Griffith present.
Not a lot would change. Madeline would in all probability watch Matlock reruns on TV whereas persevering with to struggle for justice for her daughter.
We’d nonetheless get weekly insights into all of the trauma the world causes by being the way in which it’s, mixed with thè thriller progressing about who coated up these paperwork.
Nevertheless, the collection would lose one thing — primarily, that Madeline is so mired in grief, guilt, and anger that she is keen to do something to show wrongdoing, even fake to be considered one of her TV heroes in order that she will catch and punish the individuals whose unethical habits contributed to Ellie’s demise.
What Different TV Writers Can Be taught From the Matlock Reboot
Matlock succeeds as a result of it takes solely these components of the unique which can be obligatory to inform its story and crafts an authentic premise round these two or three factors.
That’s the blueprint for different reboots. Don’t attempt to be a brand new model of the unique — borrow your favourite components of the unique and construct a brand new present round them.
I’ve been dreading the Scrubs reboot as a result of the unique ended superbly.
Then it returned for a ridiculous half-season that had nothing to do with the characters I’d liked for seven years. Now it’s supposedly going to make use of the identical characters and actors.
Matlock reveals us a greater means ahead.
A Scrubs reboot doesn’t want one other simply distracted, extremely imaginative intern who’s secretly crushing on considered one of his new co-workers.
The center of the present was JD’s relationships with the individuals he labored with and (within the early seasons) his concern of not being ok.
Writers may do quite a bit with these concepts in a medical setting apart from repeating what has come earlier than.
Conversely, they might take a few of Scrubs’ core ideas and apply them to a distinct setting altogether.
That is what St. Denis Medical did by rebooting The Workplace in a medical setting, and it’s been an outstanding success.
That is an instance of the identical type of factor Matlock has carried out: created one thing model new out of one thing previous.
Over to you, Matlock fanatics.
Do you assume Matlock is displaying TV writers a path out of reboot hell, or is that this a one-off success that wouldn’t work in different contexts?
Hit the feedback together with your ideas.
Matlock airs on CBS on Thursdays at 9/8c and on Paramount+ on Fridays.
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