Created by Michelle King and Robert King
“I don’t think anyone’s expecting me.”
— Elspeth introduces herself to the NYPD in the first episode.
Understatement of the year?
A spin-off of sorts from The Good Wife (and its sequel, The Good Fight) finds weirdo (but successful) defense lawyer ELSBETH TASCIONI (played with Emmy-winning WTF? charm by Carrie Preston) in her own show, relocating from Chicago to New York City to keep an eye on the NYPD as part of a federal Consent Decree.
The debut opened with a classic Colombo-style murder (recently re-popularized by Ryan Johnson’s Poker Face), and the rest of the show follows the filter-free, mitten-wearing Elspeth as she introduces herself to the NYPD detectives working the case, and inserts herself, uninvited, into the investigation, much to the annoyance of pretty much everyone.
It’s a thin line the show has to walk here, though. How quirky is too much? I wouldn’t want the show to devolve into a Monk-like schtick fest, where the eccentricities of the detective threaten to swamp the boat.
As in, how often can Elspeth pivot from murder and violence to “Ooh, that’s pretty!”?
Fortunately, Good Wife and Good Fight creators and writers Michelle King and Robert King are pros, and they have a pretty good track record of knowing when to rein it in–and when to go for broke. Plus, they’ve been carefully working Elspeth into their both their legal dramas for since 2009, always to good effect.
It all looks promising, and having Wendell (The Wire) Pierce as a suspicious (and possibly corrupt) Captain C.W. Wagner and Carra Patterson as Kaya Blanke, a young patrol officer reluctantly ordered by Wagner to “keep an eye” on Elspeth, as co-stars, not to mention the Kings in the writers room, can’t hurt.
But it’s not a P.I. show, at least so far. Then again, both The Good Wife and The Good Fight boasted some pretty intriguing private eyes in their supporting casts.
We shall see…
TELEVISION
- ELSPETH
(2024, CBS)
10 60-minute episodes
Premiere: February 29, 2024
Created by Michelle King and Robert King
Writers: Michelle King, Robert King
Directors: Robert King, Rosemary Rodriguez, Ron Underwood
Starring as Carrie Preston as ELSPETH
With Wendell Pierce as C. W. Wagner
and Carra Patterson as Kaya Blanke
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
