Matlock 2024: Remake of 80s TV show with Kathy Bates has more than a few surprises

For many people, the legal drama Matlock has less to do with the actual show and more to do with The Simpsons.

It was a recurring joke that Grampa Simpson and his retirement village mates loved Andy Griffith’s investigative lawyer. Abe hated everything except Matlock, demanded that a Matlock Expressway be built, and would never miss an episode.

“Maaaaaatlock!” You can hear it in your head now.

The original series ran in the US from 1986 to 1995 and, even then during the age of broadcast monoculture, it was a show whose audience definitely skewed older.

Decades on, developed nations are challenged with an ageing population thanks to declining birth rates, and rancour between Boomers and younger generations.

They may own all the investment properties and, technically, still run the world, but they also catch a lot of flak - marginalised, overlooked and underestimated, except when you need to villainise them.

As for an older woman? She’s invisible.

That’s exactly what the new Matlock is banking on, and the choice to gender-flip the character to a 75-year-old woman, played by the brilliant Kathy Bates, is super smart.

The 2024 version is neither, by the letter of the law, a reboot nor a revival. This show exists in a universe in which the original series was real. In fact, the character introduces herself to everyone she meets along the lines of “Madeleine Matlock, like the old TV show”.

She hustles her way into a job at a top-tier law firm by weaponising the fact no one sees her or thinks about her, cleverly bypassing all the layers of security to walk into a partner’s meeting.

How Madeleine presents herself is this: She’s 75 and recently widowed after the death of an abusive husband, and now needs to get back into the workforce to look after herself and her grandson.

Madeleine is immediately an asset because she can get into places without being noticed, persuade people because her life experience makes her very good with people, and has excellent deductive reasoning.

But Madeleine has a secret, which is that she’s not Madeleine Matlock at all but Madeleine Kingston, who is not financially strapped and whose husband (Sam Anderson) is very much alive and not an abuser.

The more homespun Matlock is a persona she’s created to infiltrate that law firm so she can investigate its complicity in helping its big pharma client keep opioids on the market.

It’s a personal crusade as her daughter died from addiction, and Madeleine is determined to hold to account those responsible. She chose the name Matlock as a tribute to her daughter, who loved the show.

The “twist”, which is revealed in the first episode, is what gives this revamped Matlock emotional stakes beyond the case of the week format, which are often laced with social justice themes so you always remember that the character fights not just for her own vendetta but others who have been wronged.

But the overarching story is what keeps it interesting as her web of lies grows and you track how she tries to compartmentalise the conflict between the bond she’s formed with her co-workers (Skye P. Marshall, Jason Ritter, David Del Rio, Leah Lewis and Beau Bridges) and the mission.

The double-life is not an easy one to live. Especially when it also involves her young grandson Alfie (Aaron Harris) who is a whizz at hacking but should be doing, you know, kid stuff.

The series works because Bates is just so great at being wily and duplicitous, and entirely wholesome all at once. She is so watchable that even in a procedural, she keeps it fresh.

When Paul W. Downs won the Best Comedy Emmy for Hacks in September, he specifically called out the dearth of main characters on TV who are over 60 years old. The lead of Hacks is Jean Smart, who is 73, and Bates is 76.

The two shows are tonally very different and Hacks has had three seasons to bed in its story about an ageing comic fighting against irrelevance but also learning to grow and be open to change.

Matlock isn’t telling that specific story but it lives in a similar universe, one in which someone the world no longer valued decided to take up space and demand that she still had something to offer.

As one of Madeleine’s young colleagues says to her, “Teach me your ways, Betty White”.

Matlock is broadcast on Channel 10 on Mondays and streaming on 10 Play and Paramount+, with new episodes weekly