Elsbeth review: Carrie Preston shines in a kooky twist on the network procedural
The Good Wife and The Good Fight's creators spin off a beloved guest star in this CBS series
TV Reviews Carrie Preston
Spinoffs are tricky. But if there’s a pair of creators with experience doing them within the landscape of 21st century American television, it’s Robert and Michelle King. The two, after all, successfully ushered the world of the ambitious network drama The Good Wife into the form-defying streaming spinoff The Good Fight. And now the Good-verse is further branching out with arguably one of broadcast television’s most intriguing prospects: Elsbeth, which premieres February 29, a show that has all the trappings of a weekly CBS procedural wrapped in a kooky sensibility that feels in short supply in the post-Peak TV era.
Fans of those Julianne Margulies and Christine Baranski-fronted series will be familiar with Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston), an intuitive legal thinker who, as we witness in almost every single scene in her eponymous new show, always has to carry around a trio of tote bags—all the better to bumble her way into spaces and conversations that would otherwise exclude her. Elsbeth, we learn, has left Chicago behind and now finds herself working with the NYPD as part of a consent decree wherein Big Apple police have agreed to have Ms. Tascioni oversee their investigations so as to (further) avoid lawsuits by adhering to the word of the law.
If that sounds like a bit of needless plotting, don’t worry: Elsbeth is self-aware enough to point out how little anyone knows what it is the Chicago transplant is doing as she meddles, week in and week out, into murder investigations in New York City that, despite looking like open-and-shut cases, turn out to be intricately more challenging. That is to say: Every time Elsbeth arrives at a crime scene, she’s quick to find irregularities that work against the seemingly obvious rulings cops and detectives would make in haste to get them solved.
In this way, Elsbeth operates a bit like a modern-day Murder She Wrote. Preston’s quirky lawyer turned NYPD overseer is constantly stumbling onto murders only she, with her off-kilter demeanor and quirky M.O., can solve. Time and time again, Elsbeth’s ingenuity and persistence (no matter how annoying or off-putting others may find it) wins out in the end, with her hunches—gathered from a Sherlock-ian attention to detail—constantly pushing her toward making discoveries the NYPD would otherwise have missed.
A show like this one lives or dies on the strength of its protagonist. Thankfully, the way the Kings have further shaped Elsbeth so she can finally be the focus is nothing short of miraculous. Rather than bend her into becoming a main character, what they’ve done (with Preston’s help) is make this quintessentially supporting character take center stage; this is the Elsbeth Tascioni The Good Wife fans all know and love. She’s just now been given room to breathe and grow as she tries to figure out whether she can have it all in the Big Apple. Preston, who won an Emmy for playing Elsbeth back in 2013, is clearly relishing the chance to revisit this most cloyingly charming character and making her aggressively warm eclectic energy work against the strictures of the more neurotically minded world of New York City. Preston is able to make it clear that Elsbeth is a woman whose mind is swirling a mile a minute even as her patient, dry demeanor may suggest she’s often moving at half-speed. It’s a tightrope to walk, and Preston makes it all look effortless, as she’s done in a long career full of offbeat characters.
When Elsbeth Tascioni enters a room (or a scene, even), she does so askew. She appears out of unsuspecting corners, her head popping out sideways from walls and doors alike. At one point, she even jumps into view from behind a crowd of New Yorkers gawking at a crime scene. The way Carrie Preston plays her, Elsbeth is the kind of fish out of water character who wears such a moniker with unsuspecting pride. We first meet her touring Manhattan’s streets with a Statue of Liberty foam crown, unwaveringly sunny and earnest. She’s not embarrassed by her whims and desires; she dresses loudly (in pinks and reds and yellows and greens), pushing back against the idea that to be taken seriously you need to dress seriously. I mean, take her name: What kind of name is “Elsbeth” anyway?
But Elsbeth is keen enough to know how to play into this: She goads everyone around her to discount her so that a phone call, a meeting, or a run-in later, she can better test her many wild theories about why that suicide scene in that posh apartment really looks more like a murder, why that accident on the balcony looks more like a premeditated incident, and why that reality TV show death looks more like the result of a star-studded vendetta. And, from the first three episodes, it’s obvious this case-of-the-week structure is going to work wonders—especially if the Kings keep up their knack for ace guest stars. Elsbeth’s first three episodes alone feature Jane Krakowski (as a ruthless real estate agent), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (as a reality TV exec), and Linda Lavin (as an insufferable Manhattanite).
And therein lies what makes Elsbeth such a joy to watch. Episode in and episode out, you witness cops, detectives, witnesses, and possible suspects continually underestimate her. They all look at her, with her wide-eyed grin and her knitted mittens (or various totes, or colorful skirts, or placid pleasantries), and they assume she’s no match for them, that she’s no one worth paying attention to. That’s what Wendell Pierce’s captain C.W. Wagner thinks when Elsbeth first shows up to oversee his boys in blue and what Carra Patterson’s cop Kaya Blanke first has to see past once she starts working alongside Elsbeth in the various cases that fall on their laps.
Perhaps, like many of those New Yorkers who first encounter Ms Tascioni, you may be inclined to casually dismiss her as too flighty and frivolous. But keep watching—the show but also Preston’s masterful performance—and you’ll find a comfort watch the likes of which they don’t make that often anymore. Now let’s just hope the show, a rainy-day binge if there ever was one, gets renewed for plenty more seasons.
Elsbeth premieres February 29 on CBS
26 Comments
“this is the Elsbeth Tascioni The Good Wife fans all know and love”Hm…is this true? I used to watch TGW and I found her character annoying and phony-seeming. That said, I’m curious to give this show a try because I otherwise loved TGW and more or less trust those who made it, but I struggle to envision her as a character I’d like to see a whole lot of.Anyway, the story in general is just Mary McDonnell’s Captain Raydor character in The Closer. She played that role brilliantly.
Nah.
I think this could get tired very quickly if they don’t provide some actual character development like they did for Kelsey Grammer with “Frasier.” The character quirks from “The Good Wife” are just a hook that were frankly getting tired with repeat guest appearances on that show. I’ve been seeing ads for this show for months, and until reading this review, my assumption was “Ugh – another Michael Richards Show-style spinoff of a character best enjoyed in small doses…”
If you watched Good Fight you could see that the Kings are excellent at recentering stories and building out marginal characters. Their shows aren’t flashy but they really understand character-building.
“what kind of name is ‘Elsbeth’”It’s a German(ic) form of Elizabeth.
It sounds a little like Columbo, where his weird mannerisms invite the bad guy’s ego into thinking he’s toying with him, when it’s really the other way around.
Also sounds a little like “Will Trent” and “Monk”.
No doubt, but they don’t play stupid quite like Columbo did.
There was an article in the NYPost the other day where Carrie said the show was directly inspired by Colombo.Then again, Elsbeth existed prior to this series of course, so her character may or may not have originally been inspired by that.
Watched it, kinda liked it, and saw a Columbo ep with pretty much the same ending, where he points out a flaw in the bad guy’s plan so he could catch him trying to fix it.Then again, I guess I’ve seen that in other shows too.
It sounds like the American version of…any number of British detective shows.
Definitely picked up more of a “Columbo” vibe here than a “Jessica Fletcher” one. Jessica came at a case from a “murder expert” angle; Columbo more as a lower-class bumbler (the better to disarm the suspects’ defenses).
The Kings have an excellent record: The Good Fight turned into an incredible left-turn of a Good Wife sequel, turning out some of the best borderline speculative/surrealist procedural TV ever made. (OK, not a big category, to be fair.) And Evil is fantastic (and weirdly under-watched). These creators take well-trod material like Colombo and make it sing with their own idiosyncratic gestures. Cannot wait for this.
I am so hot for this show!!! Does anyone know if it will also stream on Paramount Plus?
As a life long resident of Evansville, every new triumph by a UE grad is a cause for celebration.
This could be good. Carrie Preston seems to have fun with the role and Wendell Pierce is in it.And – I was extremely skeptical when I heard of The Good Fight -couldn’t see how well a show with leftover characters (sort of) from The Good Wife would work. But it worked, I think, better than its progenitor. So yeah. The Kings might have a good idea here.
They stopped even pretending they weren’t in NYC around season 2 of the Good Wife, so the “transplant” issue is non-existant.
I enjoyed her in limited amounts on The Good Wife, but I can’t imagine watching her as a lead character week after week. I think I will pass.
Sighhhh, it sounds the Kings have really tripled-down on their bootlicking in this one. That’s… unfortunate. Making Elsbeth (one of the quirkiest, most lovable, brilliant weirdos in their universe) affiliated with the NYPD? AND HELPING THEM? Nah. Fuck that. I realize this is CBS and that’s their brand, but I’m not watching another series where we’re expected to empathize with cops. I had a pretty tough time with all of the Kings’ IDF worship throughout The Good Fight and was super excited to finally watch a series without that brutally-awful Marisa character. But this? Woof. Sorry Carrie Preston, I really do adore you, but this one’s gonna be a hard pass.Fuck the IDF, fuck the NYPD, and fuck CBS. FREE PALESTINE.
I watched the episode. It is made clear that she is observing NYPD because of past lawsuits against them.
Also, free the hostages.
You don’t cast Wendell Pierce if you’re making the cops the bad guys, fed.
Man, I wonder how many bodies the NYPD is distracting from if TV shows spend this many hundreds of millions of dollars trying to tell everybody they’re awesome people.Oh, right, I know exactly how many bodies they’re distracting from.
One wonders if CBS is trying to get rid of this show before it has a chance to begin—-the second episode is a month away.That is terrible scheduling.I liked it. It is your standard cop show with the crazy quirky investigator solving everything for them, but Carrie is so freaking awesome it doesn’t matter.Also Wendell Pierce is perfectly cast as the chief.
CBS always runs NCAA March Madness Thur-Sunday every year. Can’t be avoided.
Yeah, I’m thinking they either should have launched it earlier or later. Oh well.
Spoiler warning for the first episode.I am happy to see the GWCU continue, as I love every show by the Kings (watch BrainDead!). But the initial premise of Elsbeth being a savant cop helper personality like Monk, Psych, Crossing Jordan, and so many others, gives me pause. More than that, though, is how The Good Wife, The Good Fight, and BrainDead all had a deeply political identity to their stories and characters, while this show seems completely apolitical, outside of the apparent copaganda on the surface level*, contrary to the Chicago cops literally trying to murder everyone on basically every episode they appeared in previously.I see and still enjoy the appeal of the special little weirdo solving crime in black and white situations with no need for nuance, but I am starving for some brain food on TV, a voice that shines a light on these issues we need to think about. Maybe the Kings got tired of politics. As much as I care about issues, I hate politics and people whose entire identity revolves around stupid things like not wearing a mask or having 50 guns. People who aren’t even worth engaging with because they’re empty and have nothing worthwhile to say, only cheerleading dicks and conspiracies in their culture war. Still, as exhausting and soul crushing the world can be, there should be something on TV talking about the issues of our time.*Beyond the basic structure of a police procedural, Elsbeth’s primary, long-term function seems to be the investigation into the police captain’s corruption. One episode is an unfair way to assess the identity of the entire series, but I have to hope that the guy is guilty. If he’s innocent, then there isn’t really a big picture story so much as politicians inappropriately targeting law enforcement for brownie points, which doesn’t sound like a story the Kings would write. So I expect our lead to be put into serious danger the closer to the truth she gets. Plus, it’d be more interesting if Wendell Pierce played a villain than another basic, thankless, phone it in police captain role. Nothing wrong with Columbo, but I need so much more.