Matlock is now getting the television reboot treatment...

Oh for frick sakes.

Do we really need to see Matlock as an old lesbian?

Again, I'm so glad someone at some point in time had enough creativity to build brands for the corporate scum suckers to regurgitate with race and gender swaps infinitely.

I do like Kathy Bates. It will probably suck though.

WOMAN ROAR!!! WOOOOO!!!

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Talented writing is a thing of the past so you're right.

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I think this analysis is understandable, but wrong. While I can't say there is plenty of talent to go around, I suspect that the number of talented writers is probably the same as it was 15, 20 years ago. It is just so diluted and spread throughout all these various organs that produce a slurry of shitty content, just 1 bad show after another.

Not to play the nostalgia card, but let's harken back to something like Hill Street Blues. I use this as an exemplar of episodic television (with some threads) that is a bridge between old school dramas and modern dramas. Ran 6 years, won 4 Emmys (deservedly so, IMHO) for best drama. The acting was fantastic for the era and the show benefitted from excellent direction, production staff, etc., so it didn't just ride on its writing.

Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll did the heavy lifting, writing-wise, along with Anthony Yerkovich for the first couple of seasons. Jeffrey Lewis, David Milch and Michael Wagner came in for Season 3 to spread more of the load out (and obviously, Bochco did fewer scripts, but still wrote lots of stories). By the end of Season 3/beginning Season 4, they had added Mark Frost. Now, scads of other folks dropped in and out, and the final couple of seasons, you had John Romano and others, and even a few one offs from folks like David Mamet.

If you sat there and sketched out folks who wrote the 146 scripts for HSB, you would say, "G-damn! If a show today had just 2 or 3 of these cats, it would be the best thing going!" And, that's what happens. A guy like Chase or Gilligan or what have you builds a show and if he's good, the show is good.

So, that dilution of the talent pool combined with the decision-making for what gets greenlit (Reboot, reimagining, sequels seem to dominate television as well a film these days), PLUS all the "non-meritorious" inclusions/changes to these or new stories adds up to a precipitous drop in quality from just a few years ago.

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Do we really need to see Matlock as an old lesbian?

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While it doesn’t state that, chances are high she’ll will be.

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Hollywood is obsessed with quotas now. They need a certain number of women, a certain number of black people and other "people of color," a certain number of gays, etc etc etc. Not just in the writing room, but also on screen. Another problem is they will very rarely be allowed to show flaws in a person from a "marginalized group."

This not only prevents Hollywood from hiring only the best writers, but also limits what the writers can do in the writing room.

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I referenced these problems with my "non-meritorious" comment to try to keep this as apolitical as possible.

Bottom line - even when quality is a priority, it is difficult to attain. When quality takes a backseat to *ahem* "other" considerations and isn't even a priority for the creators, then it becomes nigh impossible to attain.

This will bomb if they make it woke.

Because the target audience for Matlock is 65 and older.

Would like to see a homeless drug addict with a penchant for getting in trouble with the law and somehow ends up solving highly complex cases via hallucinations

It would be called Methlock

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While I can't say there is plenty of talent to go around, I suspect that the number of talented writers is probably the same as it was 15, 20 years ago. It is just so diluted and spread throughout all these various organs that produce a slurry of shitty content, just 1 bad show after another.

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I've been saying a version of this for a while now. Think of it like a sports league expanding exponentially and trying to fill the rosters with capable talent. There will still be stars, but in order to fill a ridiculous amount of roster spots you're going to bring in a ton of shitty players to fill them.

I think this is partly responsible for what you've seen over the past decade or so as you've now got a ton of streaming sites, etc that are all creating their OWN content. Too much of it needs to be churned out to expect high level talent at every spot.

It's also simply a lazy money grab by studios who bet on idiots flocking to old IPs out of name recognition regardless of how much they frick them up time and time again, but whatever.