TV Talk at TCA: 'Elevated' procedurals reign this fall, including Pittsburgh native Zachary Quinto's show

PASADENA, Calif. — Procedural dramas — episodic shows that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end in one hour — were TV staples from the 1950s through the 1990s.

In the ‘80s, serialized dramas with ongoing storylines began to emerge with “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere,” and later “China Beach.” Cable advanced the genre with the likes of “The Shield,” “The Sopranos” and “Game of Thrones.”

But in recent years broadcast networks, especially, have retreated from serialization in favor of procedurals. Now those series have additional elements, often mild serialization that’s threaded through a season while still offering an open-and-shut case in each episode.

CBS’s “Tracker” and “Elsbeth” offer successful examples of these so-called “elevated” procedurals (AKA “characturals”). They’ll be joined this fall by CBS’s “Matlock” (previews 8 p.m. Sept. 22), ABC’s “High Potential” (10 p.m. Sept. 17) and NBC’s “Brilliant Minds” (10 p.m. Sept. 23) starring Pittsburgh native Zachary Quinto. All three are varying degrees of decent-to-good.

Surprisingly, “Matlock” is the cleverest of the bunch. Despite sharing a title with the 1986-95 legal drama that starred Andy Griffith, CBS’s “Matlock” turns out not to be a straight reboot (to say more would be a spoiler).

Kathy Bates stars as Madeline “Matty” Matlock, who gets a job at a large firm despite colleagues’ skepticism about her skills as a lawyer who hasn’t practiced law in three decades.

“I wanted to write about how older women are overlooked in society, and I gave myself a challenge: I wanted our heroine to be constantly telling the audience that she’s being underestimated, and then I wanted the audience to enjoy watching her take advantage of that underestimation,” said writer Jennie Snyder Urman (“Jane the Virgin”). “And then, by the end, even though she said it constantly and we watched it happen over and over again, I wanted to still be able to shock the audience when they realize that they, too, have underestimated Madeline Matlock.”

The notion of a new series using the “Matlock” title originated with “NCIS: Los Angeles” actor Eric Christian Olsen, who also produces.

“I remember looking through a list of IP and seeing ‘Matlock’ and being overwhelmed with the sense memory of sitting on my grandma’s floor watching the show,” he said. “And we early on described it as, like, Werther’s Television where your hero was just in search of the truth.”

He said there was talk early on of centering the show on the original Matlock’s 27-year-old granddaughter but he prefers the version that centers on Bates, 76.

“The philosophy of getting somebody who’s lived and lived and lost to take you by the hand on this journey for justice I think is a beautiful echo of the sentiment of that original show that I have distinct memories of,” he said.

The comedic performance of actress Kaitlin Olson (“Hacks,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) buoys ABC’s “High Potential,” which has nothing to do with marijuana but is instead about a smart single mother with an exceptional knack for details who winds up working with a police department to help solve crimes. She’s also in search of the father of her child, a serialized running story in the background of episodes.

Executive producer Todd Harthan, essentially the showrunner on the 2007 filmed-in-Pittsburgh miniseries “The Kill Point,” said balancing the case-of-the-week with the serialized story is a challenge.

“It is something that I think we really want to seed throughout the series,” Harthan said of the show that’s based on the French series “Haut Potentiel Intellectuel (HPI).” “We’re trying to figure out the exact pace at which we’re going to tell that story.”

Pittsburgh native Zachary Quinto (“Heroes,” “Star Trek: Beyond”) headlines NBC’s “Brilliant Minds” as a face-blind neurologist with some similarities to the lead character on “House,” but Quinto’s Dr. Oliver Wolf is warm and has a better bedside manner.

Quinto’s character is inspired by Dr. Oliver Wolf Sacks, a British neurologist who wrote the book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”

“He is ultimately our North Star,” Quinto said Sunday during NBC’s portion of the Television Critics Association summer 2024 press tour. “I get to play a character inspired by a real-life person but I’m not tethered to period or the behavior of that person in real life.”

NBC originally titled the series “Wolf,” then “Dr. Wolf” and eventually switched to “Brilliant Minds.”

“With ‘Wolf’ maybe people would think I’d turn into a wolf given the supernatural quality to the roles I’ve played in the past,” Quinto said

The actor’s breakthrough role was on NBC’s sci-fi drama “Heroes,” so he sees this return to the network as a homecoming.

“A solar eclipse awakened peoples’ power and sense of what they could accomplish [on ‘Heroes’],” Quinto said, “and we started filming [‘Brilliant Minds’] on April 8, the day of the solar eclipse, so there was this connection back to ‘Heroes,” which made me think there was something at play here and made me feel ever more connected to this show and NBC again.”

Following the second season of “Ed & Day in the Burgh” – a third season is in production – Pittsburghers Ed Bailey and Day Bracey will next appear on Very Local’s “America’s Most Delish: Midwest,” premiering Thursday.

The pair are featured in every episode of this new food appreciation series inspired by Hearst Magazine’s Delish brand. Though Bailey and Bracey are contributors, the show has yet to film an episode in Pittsburgh but the season includes episodes in Des Moines, Milwaukee, Omaha and Kansas City.

Channel surfing

KDKA-TV sports freelance anchor Josh Taylor will fill in as a news anchor on Channel 2’s 4 p.m. newscast Tuesday and then he’ll fill in as a news anchor at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. July 22-26.