New and returning shows are arriving in primetime during this year's long-awaited CBS premiere week, and Kathy Bates' Matlock will take over its normal Thursday night time slot ahead of Elsbeth Season 2 moving forward. The Academy Award winner's show will in fact air in the time slot previously occupied by So Help Me Todd earlier in the 2024 TV schedule. Ahead of the premieres, one CBS star opened up about why Matlock was the perfect show to take So Help Me Todd's place ahead of Elsbeth.
When I spoke with Carrie Preston about Nathan Lane appearing in Elsbeth's Season 2 premiere, I also took the chance to ask the actress for her thoughts on Matlock as the new lead-in to her show on Thursday nights. Preston had a ringing endorsement for the change on CBS, saying:
Elsbeth certainly does have its roots in a legal drama for Matlock to appeal to many of its fans, as Carrie Preston debuted her character of Elsbeth Tascioni on The Good Wife (for which she won an Emmy in 2013) and then carried the character over to The Good Fight spinoff. That's not to say that Matlock is at all a carbon copy of either of those shows; the series premiere alone proved that Kathy Bates' Matty has a lot of tricks up her sleeve that are hard to spot at first.
Carrie Preston is on board with Elsbeth and Matlock airing back-to-back; it's now a question of whether fans will tune in weekly. As well as new episodes airing on CBS, you can find them released weekly on Paramount+. If all of this has made you nostalgic for So Help Me Todd, you can also find Skylar Astin and Marcia Gay Harden's show on the streamer.