CBS’s Matlock opens with a lie, and the show knows it. Madeline Kingston is not a broke widow scrambling for work. She is a wealthy retired lawyer who invents the persona of Madeline “Matty” Matlock to get hired at the firm she believes buried evidence that could have saved her daughter’s life.
The series, developed by Jennie Snyder Urman, premiered with a sneak peek on September 22, 2024, then took its timeslot on October 17. Season two concluded April 23, 2026, after 35 episodes across two seasons. A third season was ordered in January 2026.
Kathy Bates plays Kingston. The rest of the main cast: Skye P. Marshall as Olympia Lawrence, Jason Ritter as Julian Markston, Leah Lewis as Sarah Franklin, Sam Anderson as Edwin Kingston, and Aaron D. Harris as Alfie Kingston.
Trailer, via Rotten Tomatoes TV.
Ellie Kingston and the opioid epidemic
The premise is the engine. Kingston’s daughter Ellie died in the opioid epidemic. Kingston blames the firm, which she believes hid evidence. Her cover story — the unassuming demeanor, the wily tactics — is a tool for getting inside and digging toward the truth.
The show borrows its name from the Matlock that starred Andy Griffith, but the premise is vastly different. The original series exists inside this one’s universe. Ellie loved it. That affection is where the alias comes from. It is a neat trick, and it does real work: the audience’s memory of a gentle country lawyer becomes the mask over a woman running a long con.
Kathy Bates and the cast around her
Bates was cast when the pilot was ordered. Marshall, Ritter, David Del Rio and Lewis joined when the series was ordered. Beau Bridges came aboard in February 2024, Yael Grobglas that April, Andrea Londo and Piper Curda in August, Justina Machado in August 2025 for season two, and Henry Haber and Sarah Wright Olsen that December.
Two cast developments sit outside the fiction. On September 8, 2024, Bates called Matlock her final role before retirement. On October 9 she walked it back, saying that “I think that they got a bit confused.”
On October 9, 2025, it was reported that Del Rio had been fired over a sexual assault allegation involving Lewis. No outcome for that allegation has been reported.
Two Matlocks, two different jobs
| Matlock (2024) | Matlock (original) | |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | Kathy Bates as Madeline “Matty” Matlock | Andy Griffith |
| Creator | Jennie Snyder Urman | — |
| Network | CBS | — |
| First aired | 2024-09-22 | — |
| Episodes | 35 across 2 seasons | — |
The table is the point. Sharing a title and a network buys recognition. Everything else is rebuilt. This Matlock is not a case-of-the-week comfort watch with a folksy lead. It is a revenge story wearing that lead’s clothes.
What the disguise costs the show
The premise gives Bates two performances in one body. Matty is soft-spoken and underestimated. Kingston is formidable, and she knows the law cold. The gap between them is where the drama lives, and it is also where the risk lives. A con sustained across 35 episodes needs the firm to stay worth infiltrating. It needs Kingston’s grief to keep its weight without turning into a speech.
Kingston targets the firm because she believes it hid evidence. That is a specific accusation against the firm. It gives every case she works a second meaning. When she wins for a client, she is also earning access. When she exposes corruption from within, she is doing the job she was hired for and the job she came for at once.
The second problem is harder. Grief that motivates a two-season deception has to stay raw enough to justify the lie and contained enough to let the show function as a legal drama. The series mostly manages it by keeping Ellie offscreen and letting the alias carry the emotion. Every time Matty is underestimated, Ellie is somewhere underneath it.
Where the season-two record leaves things
The Del Rio firing is the detail that matters most here, and not because of the plot. A main cast member was removed after an allegation involving a co-star, and no outcome for that allegation has been reported. The series continued into a second season and a third. That is a production fact, not a story beat, and it sits awkwardly beside a show whose whole premise is a firm covering up harm.
The renewal record is the other fact worth weighing. CBS ordered season two in October 2024, it premiered October 12, 2025, and season three was ordered in January 2026. Networks do not hand out third seasons to shows they are unsure about.
The comparison to the Griffith original cuts both ways. It buys instant recognition from viewers who remember the name, and it sets an expectation the show deliberately breaks. That is a gamble. It works because Bates can play both the mask and the woman under it, and because the opioid backstory gives the deception a cause rather than a gimmick.
What holds and what does not
Matlock is a legal drama with a con at its center, and the con is the reason to watch. Kingston’s daughter died, the firm she blames hired her, and every episode she spends winning cases is an episode she spends getting closer to the evidence she believes they buried. That structure holds.
The weaknesses are the usual ones for a show built on a secret. The longer it runs, the more the audience knows that the people around Matty do not, and the harder it gets to keep her colleagues from looking foolish. The show has two seasons of runway behind it and a third ahead. It has not yet had to pay the full price of the lie.
Bates is the reason it clears the bar. She was cast when the pilot was ordered, and the part fits her in a way that makes the dual performance look effortless. The retirement talk and the walk-back are noise. The work is not.
7.5 of 10, per IMDb.
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