I'm Obsessed With CBS' New Detective Drama Elsbeth, But I Disagree With Its Creators About It Not Being A Good Wife Spinoff
Have you watched the well-reviewed Elsbeth yet? The new show has had a slow burn release trajectory on CBS, but now that I’m 3 episodes in, I’m really, really loving the series. The new drama is a spinoff of The Good Wife and its followup (definitely a spinoff) The Good Fight, but if you asked show creators Michelle and Robert King, they’d tell you it’s not a spinoff at all. Here’s why they feel this way, and why I definitely disagree.
First and foremost, when Robert and Michelle King were doing press for the Elsbeth spinoff starring frequent Good Wife guest star Carrie Preston, one of the things they were asked about was about Elsbeth’s status on CBS, and it turns out they think very differently about the detective drama than they did about The Good Fight, which was essentially another legal drama starring Christine Baranski in a new setting with a new cast. Robert King explained to the LA Times why they feel the new series is different.
For me, a spinoff means a continuation of the world in some way. I did think of The Good Fight as being a spinoff of The Good Wife. This feels like a really different show. It’s a different genre, a different tone.
For the creators, Elsbeth has little similarity to their previous two shows. In fact, Ms. Tascioni is constantly waxing poetic about how she’s happy to be moving away from defending the bad guys and now has a new purpose in finding the truth. On the one hand, I get what King is saying. The new drama is more of a spiritual successor to Columbo than it is to The Good Wife.
It’s literally a show about a woman who is playing a game of cat and mouse with bad guys in order to find the truth. It’s set in New York and it's about crimesolving and catching the baddie--not keeping the baddie out of prison. It’s sort of akin to its former series in the same way Cheers and Fraser are connected, but not really similar in tone at all.
And when Elsbeth tested in groups, and Carrie Preston told CinemaBlend a lot of newcomers to the series hadn't seen the former shows at all. So, the co-creators have a point. But I’d like to make mine as well.
Why I Think We Should Keep Calling Elsbeth A Spinoff (And Why It’s A Good Thing)
As we've established, plot-wise, Elsbeth has almost nothing in common with its predecessors. Each episode has a few scenes of Ms. Tascioni figuring out where she fits in as an overseer at the precinct who is forging new relationships and then many scenes of her poking at those she thinks did wrong, hoping to catch them in an untruth.
Yet, in other ways Elsbeth is exactly like the shows that came before in a way that I find largely positive. If you were a fan of The Good Wife and The Good Fight, there’s a lot of overlap in the careful way the show is written and the strongly dramatic scenes. The tone is different, but it still feels like a show from the Kings.
There’s also a ton of overlap in the way the creators are able to bring in A+ talent as guest stars, including a reunion with Preston's True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer, Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and 30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski in early episodes. The Good Wife used to draw big names like Stockard Channing, Kristen Chenoweth, Nathan Lane, and so on and so forth as well.
Finally, it’s in the same universe. Yes, Elsbeth Tascioni is in New York now and she has a different job and she’s definitely facing criminals from a different perspective, but she’s still essentially the same quirky character we all fell in love with more than a decade ago. Plus, not to just really hammer home the obvious, but there have already been in-show ties, like the fact Cary Agos is name-dropped in the first episode. I'd love to see some familiar faces pop on the series long term.
So, to me, even though it’s a very different type of show, I would absolutely recommend it to everyone who enjoyed the two King legal shows. And I think that's enough to not only declare it a spinoff, but for it to be a positive thing to call the new series such.
So maybe what we have here is a case of disagreement over semantics. Maybe we shouldn’t call it a spinoff, but a spiritual successor? An off-shoot? A “similar watch” if you will? Whatever it is, it’s great. And if you haven’t caught new episodes of Elsbeth on the 2024 TV schedule yet, you can tune in on Thursday nights at 10 p.m. ET on CBS, or stream it with your Paramount+ subscription.
