Colter Shaw is back on the case. And things are only going to get more dramatic, more intense, and more fun now that Tracker, one of the biggest hits on TV, is back for Season 2 on CBS.
Last season, TV audiences were introduced to the private detective, who uses his keen observation skills to track down missing people for reward money. Author Jeffery Deaver created the character in his 2019 novel The Never Game, which executive producers Elwood Reid and Ken Olin adapted into Tracker and recruited This Is Us alum Justin Hartley to play the eponymous people finder.
While Deaver’s novel was the direct inspiration for the series, Tracker is taking Colter in their own direction. They’re using the vibes of the novel to inspire the TV chapters of Colter’s story, not necessarily as a blueprint.
“As a source material, I think what Jeffrey Deaver laid down was the factory setting. The ethos of the characters is in that book. We just keep going back and talking about that in the room,” Elwood Reid told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “This guy has all these skills that don’t normally have an application in everyday life but in his world, they’re a big deal.”
And that world is getting bigger. Both Reid and Olin, along with Justin Hartley, are excited to bring the audience along on an even wilder adventure in the show’s sophomore season.
Go Big or Go Home
Going bigger in Season 2 is not an easy task, considering how big Tracker started in the first place. CBS gave the series the coveted post-Super Bowl premiere time slot last February and was rewarded with 18 million viewers for the first episode. Numbers obviously dropped after the big game, but Tracker still rounded out the season with over 7 million viewers for the finale, which is a stellar showing and made scoring a second season a no-brainer for CBS.
“It feels great to put something out there and work so hard on something and know that other people also think that it’s really great,” Hartley said. “We’re entertainers, right? I feel really good about my job when I know that people who are busy and who have shit going on tune in for an hour to watch our show.”
Naturally, the creative team and Hartley want to reward fans with great TV every week and they feel more prepared to do so in Season 2 because they aren’t dealing with tight deadlines exacerbated by the 2023 Hollywood strikes.
“This year is going to get better. After the strike, we had to be in production. There was like a third of the prep time for Justin. Elwood had to get scripts in because, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to find suitable [filming] sites,” Olin explained. “Now this year, even in the first episode, there’s a quality to the breakage of the s–t that he’s doing and the integration of the emotional quality of his character.”
The show doesn‘t shy away from being a procedural, but Reid and Olin set out to create an “elevated” version of CBS’ tried and true drama format. It turns out that elevating a procedural is less about bells and whistles and more about infusing light into the proceedings.
“There’s an old-fashioned earnestness to this character, coupled with a personal ministry that he has about his personal life. I know we’re on CBS, and there’s a lot of procedurals where they are like, ‘Here’s a dead body, and we’re going to find the person that killed your husband or wife or kid or whatever.’ Our guy is like, ‘I’m going to go save this person.’ That means something. I think that makes a big difference,” Reid explained. “There’s just something about this guy pulling into a different place where he doesn’t know anybody, learning about the culture of a place, and then trying to solve a case.”
Olin adds that fresh air also helps. Instead of interrogating people in police stations or hanging out in the morgue, Colter is most often hiking in the woods or out in the world talking to people.
“I think people are probably a little bit tired of the traditional team and the same kind of lighting and darkness. There are multiple versions of the same kind of ensemble or shows that are streaming and more niche-oriented,” the director detailed. “There’s an optimism here. There’s a belief in decency and all those things.”
It helps that the audience has rallied behind a main character that they can root for and Elwood and Olin know exactly what they have in Justin Hartley as a leading man.
