It’s official. Matlock is a massive hit. With a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and season two confirmed after just two episodes, its launch couldn't have been bigger or better. And, with Kathy Bates bagging a Critics Choice Award for her performance in the title role, the future is exceptionally bright for both the series and its star, an actor who's no stranger to meaty, challenging roles. Switch over to Netflix for one of her best in The Highwaymen, which sees her as a 1930s state governor who uses the law for her own ends.
Matlock has given a whole new audience the chance to appreciate the work of the multi-award-winning Bates. With a TV and film career lasting over 50 years, she's one of the best in the business, forever associated with her Oscar-winning turn in Misery (1990) as "greatest fan" Annie Wilkes. But her range is extraordinary, from recurring appearances in TV favourites such as Big Bang Theory and the US version of The Office, to films including About Schmidt (2002), Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023) and Richard Jewell (2019). That same year also saw her play a pivotal role in Netflix's The Highwaymen, the story of the two former Texas Rangers who tracked down the infamous Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in the mid-30s.
In a story based loosely on real events, Bates plays somebody who her Matlock counterpart would regard with suspicion at the very least. Miriam "Ma" Ferguson was the first female governor of Texas and, in the movie, somebody who manipulates the law without a second thought. She's certainly not on the side of the two former Texas Rangers, played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, who are in pursuit of the outlaws on the run. Dramatic license takes charge in a lengthy saga, but the director John Lee Hancock creates an engaging film with a strong sense of period and makes effective use of a cast that also includes John Carroll Lynch and Thomas Mann. Bates is on fine form, flinty-eyed, shady in her dealings and determined that nobody — but nobody — is going to stand in her way. There's a powerful authority to her performance, something that always lingers just beneath the surface in Matlock.
The actor may have been astonished by her recent Critics Choice win, but anybody who's seen her in Matlock or The Highwaymen will be anything but surprised.
If the name Matlock sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was a down-home-style courtroom drama starring veteran actor Andy Griffith as a folksy but very expensive defense attorney, who charged $100,000 per case. There was a new mystery to solve every week, which always ended with the Atlanta-based lawyer earning every cent by finding the real killer. What was a formulaic show in the Perry Mason mold was prime-time television in its day, running for over 180 episodes and making the most of the popularity of its star, who’d been a TV regular in the 1960s and 1970s.
Now it's been re-invented with a woman at the helm, Madeline "Matty" Matlock (Bates), a brilliant lawyer who, in her 70s, comes out of retirement to join a top law firm. Her unassuming manner and wily tactics make her their biggest asset as she works to establish herself in this new version of the world she used to know. The combination of Bates, a different format — the case-a-week approach is out, an on-going storyline is in — and Matty’s secret, deeply personal reason for going back to work grabbed millions of viewers. The premiere alone attracted an audience of 10.5 million. And that attraction was equally strong for Bates herself when she read the script, as she was considering semi-retirement at the time. Matlock changed that.
Season one is still screening in the US on CBS and Paramount Plus, as well as on Sky in the UK and, while filming has wrapped, there’s no word on whether the writers have started on season two. It’s certainly feasible but, in the meantime, we'll just have to wait for an announcement on the cast, hoping that Bates, along with co-stars Skye P Marshall and Jason Ritter, will all return. And it’s too early to say when season two will premiere, but autumn of this year is a possibility, given that the show launched last October.
Kathy Bates is pure class and that second season of Matlock can't come soon enough.
The Highwaymen is on Netflix in both the US and UK. Matlock is on CBS and Paramount Plus in the US and on Sky Witness in the UK.
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