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| (L-R): Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart, Cush Jumbo as Lucca Quin. (Photo Credit: Patrick Harbron/CBS) |
“The Good Wife” is back, but not really. Many of the memorable characters from the show are moving on to “The Good Fight,” the spin-off heading to CBS All-Access. The show marks the first original series for the digital subscription, video-on-demand and live streaming service.
“The Good Fight” will premiere on Sunday, February 19th on CBS All-Access beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET. In addition, a special broadcast preview of the premiere will air on the CBS Television Network that same night, Sunday, February 19th at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT.
After premiere night, all new episodes will be available weekly on Sundays exclusively for CBS All-Access subscribers.
The series is headed by “The Good Wife” creators Robert and Michelle King and stars Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo from the original series as the leads, Diane Lockhart and Lucca Quinn.
“The Good Fight,” picks up one year after the events of the final broadcast episode of “The Good Wife.” In the new series, an enormous financial scam has destroyed the reputation of a young lawyer, Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie), while simultaneously wiping out her mentor and godmother Diane Lockhart’s savings. Forced out of Lockhart & Lee, they join Lucca Quinn at one of Chicago’s pre-eminent law firms,
For Baranski, who brought Diane to life and played the character for seven years, she was ready to let her go before “The Good Fight” became a possibility.
“We didn’t know until late in the season whether or not we were going to continue with “The Good Wife,” Baranski told critics when she and the cast attended a panel for the show at the Television Critics Winter Press Tour last month in Pasadena. “There was a lot of hand-wringing, saying good-bye, are we going to say good-bye? I could have gone either way, and I certainly understand the choice to end the narrative of “The Good Wife” when it ended. We were in a state of limbo about whether we would have a future or not, and I happened to get another big offer, and then it was like, well, I’d really like to still work with the Kings, and I would really love to still play this character… one of the first things I did was say to Cush, “Come on board with me. Let’s do this.”
Jumbo, was equally excited to come on board and continue as Luca Quinn, an attorney who joined “The Good Wife” in its last season. Baranski’s character, Diane, becomes a partner at a prominent African-American firm where Luca is an associate.
Jumbo had had conversations with The Kings about their ideas for an African American law firm set in Chicago. “[The Kings] did come up with a lot of the ideas for…the African-American law firm.”
The show also tackles many social issues and race and police relations in Chicago, race in the world, what social mobility means.
“Our show, strangely enough, lives in the elegant side of Chicago,” Robert King said. “But it’s people kind of trying to perform justice in their own way, but always exploiting at the same time. So we have a law firm that takes a lot of police brutality cases and has kind of made a lot of money from these police brutality cases, so there’s this awkward picture.”
The series also stars Rose Leslie, Delroy Lindo, Sarah Steele, Paul Guilfoyle, Bernadette Peters, Justin Bartha and Erica Tazel.
The show is good, certainly one of the best legal dramas on the air right now. No offense to CBS All-Access and the idea of having such a show to kick off the venture but “The Good Fight” It deserves a bigger platform. It’s that good.
Catch a special preview of “The Good Fight,” Sunday, February 19th at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
