Matlock, 'Burbs Lead Dark Comedy Wave With Older Women
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- Matlock creator Jennie Snyder Urman frames her CBS drama as a story about a 77-year-old lead (Kathy Bates) infiltrating a New York law firm over its alleged role in the opioid crisis, which killed her character's daughter.
- Snyder Urman says she wants the show to feel 'optimistic and fun' despite its 'real underbelly,' adding that mortality and age 'circle around' Matty but 'I don't want to play that much of that, because that's not where this character is at 77.'
- The 'Burbs creator Celeste Hughey built a murder-mystery comedy around Keke Palmer's new-mother attorney, who relies on a trio of older neighbors — Julia Duffy's Lynn, Paula Pell's Dana, and Mark Proksch's Tod — to investigate her husband's hidden past.
- Hughey explicitly avoided casting Lynn as a 'Karen' suspicious of a Black newcomer in a white suburb, instead making her 'the neighbor who's always looking out for the block and keeping eyes on the street.'
- The 'Burbs foursome is 'all outsiders; they're all dealing with their own kind of shame and secrets,' Hughey says, comparing the group to a 'modern-day Dorothy Gale and her friends from Oz.'
- Other shows riding the same wave include BritBox's 'Riot Women' (a rock band), Netflix's 'How to Get to Heaven From Belfast' (uncovering dark secrets), and Netflix's 'The Hunting Wives' (committing and covering up crimes).
Why it matters: Networks are betting Emmy voters and audiences are ready for a generation of leading ladies the industry has historically sidelined, and they're packaging them in prestige genre fare — legal thriller, murder mystery, suburban satire — rather than soft dramas. That bet cuts against the long-standing convention that women over 50 don't anchor buzzy TV, and the creators' own comments on age, mortality, and visibility show the trend is partly a deliberate corrective.
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