Television is gearing up for a jolt of sweet, sweet nostalgia. Classic legal drama Matlock is getting the reboot treatment, with Oscar-winning actress Kathy Bates (Misery) taking on the mantle of Andy Griffith’s beloved criminal defense attorney.
Deadline reports that CBS has ordered a pilot episode of a new take on Matlock. Bates will star as Madeline Matlock, a shrewd lawyer who re-enters the working world in her seventies. The original series, which ran for nearly ten years from 1986 to 1995, starred Andy Griffith as the titular Ben Matlock, a rustic but intrepid criminal defense attorney prone to dramatic confrontations.
From what we know of the upcoming reboot, Bates’ gender-swapped Matlock will be a similar mix of grouch and legal expertise. The logline for the pilot episode reads:
“After achieving success in her younger years, the brilliant septuagenarian Madeline Matlock (Kathy Bates) rejoins the work force at a prestigious law firm where she uses her unassuming demeanor and wily tactics to win cases and expose corruption from within. Based on the classic television series of the same name.”
The new Matlock was written by Jane the Virgin creator Jennie Snyder Urman. Per Deadline, Kathy Bates, who also served as an Executive Producer on the project, boarded the show after reading Urman’s script.
The pilot marks Bates’ first major television role since her five-year run on the anthology series American Horror Story, for which she received multiple Golden Globe nominations and nabbed an Emmy win.
Bates is no stranger to the legal procedure. The actress headlined Harry’s Law, a crime drama that aired for only two seasons from 2011 to 2012 before it was canceled, despite being NBC’s most-watched drama series.
No word yet on when the new Matlock pilot will begin shooting, or whether the reboot will in fact get a full series order. In the meantime, you can binge all seasons of the original Matlock on Pluto TV.
