Viewers only thought they said "Farewell forever" to certain characters from "The Good Wife." A spinoff series is slated with Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo for Spring 2017 for CBS All Access channel. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
Just ten days after CBS Sunday night prime time fans said goodbye to Alicia and Peter Florrick, and all of their friends and slightly wacky family members, most television viewers might have thought that was the last word on the characters created by the inventive minds of Robert and Michelle King. But it wasn’t. Too many great stories to tell and too talented an ensemble cast to really let that be the last word on the subject. On May 18, Michael Ausiello of TV Line reported that CBS announced the Spring 2017 launch of an official “Good Wife” spinoff.
So far the unnamed show will star Christine Baranski (Diane Lockhart) and Cush Jumbo (Lucca Quinn). Set to launch in Spring 2017, the timeframe for the show picks up one year after the “last slap” Diane applied to Alicia. However, don’t look for it on prime time quite yet. You’ll be able to watch it on CBS All Access, which is the most brilliant strategic move the network can use to get viewers to pay $5.99 per month for more content. Surely, the show will build viewership for a while and then make the move back to prime time on Sunday nights.
The talented and versatile Christine Baranski portrayed the self-assured and creative Diane Lockhart so well that her return will be welcome on whatever frequency CBS chooses to launch the show. Fans will be left to guess what happened in the year following the parent series’ finale but that should make for great follow-up stories for the next year.
Cush Jumbo played attorney Lucca Quinn and easily assumed the role of Alicia’s first true best friend that she’d had in, conceivably, the entire life of the show. Working in the trenches of intake with Alicia, Lucca offered wise counsel, thorough research, and true caring for the well-being of her friend. Last October, Chris Harnick of “E News” went so far as to name Ms. Jumbo “the fan who became its breakout star.”
There was a major talent team in place for all seven seasons of “The Good Wife,” and “series creators Michelle and Robert King” chose Phil Alden Robinson to be the series’ first named Executive Producer. It will be fun to speculate if viewers will see others from the law firm formerly known as Lockhart et al. (too many variations of the partner names to list) will appear, whether as guests or regular characters, but it’s probably a safe bet that they will.
Nice to see there’s new life breathed into the “Good Wife” and it’s even better that CBS didn’t make viewers wait more than 10 days before issuing encouraging news. One more thing the network did was the brilliant move to give faithful viewers the opportunity to watch a successful launch of Michael Weatherly’s new show, “Bull,” based on the real-life jury selection practice of now-famous psychologist and motivational expert, Dr. Phil McGraw.
The network cradled “Bull” in the rocking chair between “NCIS” and “NCIS: New Orleans,” really showing Weatherly, and his fans, all the love (thank you Les Moonves, but watch how they'll change his time slot after 6 weeks and I predict it will be to Thursday nights to see how it 'really' does wihtout the Bellisario-McGill-Glasberg-Harmon-born cushion). Now, it’s a safe bet that once the show is on a safe trajectory, they’ll move it to another night, much as they do with “The Big Bang Theory” as the eternal power lead-in, but not at first. That’s really sort of brilliant, don’t you think? Network programming strategy is not for beginners. Stay tuned for more information as it develops.
