I'm Obsessed With Reboots And Classic TV. So I Asked An Expert Why.

A new version of "Matlock." "Perry Mason" reruns. Why is nostalgia taking over my TV watching habits?

When CBS gave us a sneak peek of the rebooted “Matlock” with Kathy Bates in September, one of the first TV references in the episode was to the iconic 1950s show “Perry Mason.”

“Nice? Don’t tell me to be nice,” Sarah (Leah Lewis) tells her colleague Billy (David Del Rio), after their boss tells them to bring Matty (Bates) up to speed at the law firm. “I need to be trained by senior partners, not by senior citizens. No offense, Perry Mason.”

It’s an appropriate line. In the premiere of the new “Matlock,” Bates’ character — based on the original role made popular by Andy Griffith in the ’80s and ’90s — takes cues from Mason’s often tricky legal maneuvers. As a Bates fan, I’ve watched the special premiere episode twice and was so intrigued by the writers’ clever use of the old “Matlock” premise with a new idea. She’s sneaky like Griffith’s character but in a way that keeps you intrigued to find out what’s next.

On Thursday night’s new episode, we get a deeper look at Bates’ Matlock character, who has a secret back story. Her reason for working for the law firm is to discover which of three attorneys helped a pharmaceutical company escape responsibility for the opioid epidemic — an epidemic that killed her only daughter. While this episode deals with some tropes of ageism, the Matlock character, like Griffith before her, uses her wiles to uncover case-solving clues. She says, “I’m just a harmless old lady,” while her stealth proves that she is anything but harmless to the criminals.

Audiences can draw a straight line from the new CBS show through to the original “Matlock” to “Perry Mason.” “Perry Mason,” whose titular attorney defends falsely accused people in every episode, was originally a 15-minute radio program from 1943 to 1955, based on the books by Erle Stanley Gardner, before premiering on TV in 1957. The original “Matlock” series, which aired from 1986 to 1995 was compared to the Mason show, as they were both written by television producer Dean Hargrove. After the successful CBS show, multiple reboots have updated “Perry Mason,” including an HBO series that began in 2020 and lasted two seasons.