Prime Eyes Good Wife Sisterhood

If the acclaimed Good Wife spin-off, The Good Fight, doesn’t land a broadcaster here, expect keen interest from streaming services like Lightbox and Netflix.

The series debuted softly on CBS at the weekend but was never intended for broadcast TV, anyway, having been commissioned as the flagship for CBS’ streaming service, AllAccess.

Reviewers were quick to embrace the show, in which Christine Baranski resumes her role as Diane Lockhart — but this time impoverished and working for a predominantly African-American law firm.

Fans of The Good Wife “won’t regret figuring out how to make this new show a part of their lives,” predicted IndieWire while the New York Times observed its similarities to the original: “the snappy dialogue, the technology obsession, the case-of-the-week structure.”

Because the series is distributed by CBS Television Studios International, you might expect it to automatically air on Prime as part of the channel’s output deal with the Hollywood heavyweight.

But that deal is limited to shows produced by CBS TV Studios for linear television and doesn’t include online commissions.

However, programmers are keen to preview the pilot and of all the free-to-air channels, Prime’s the only one that will be interested in broadcast rights.

The Good Wife flopped on Three (which is re-running the penultimate season post-Newshub Late on Thursdays) and although TVNZ has picked up other spin-offs from Three properties, like 24:Legacy and upcoming The Blacklist: Redemption, it scarcely needs another female-skewed drama to litter late-night.

However, the reasons behind CBS’ decision to stream The Good Fight rather than air the sister show of one of it most popular series will resonate here with Lightbox and Netflix.

Both already have it on their services, with Netflix having recently added season seven.

Lightbox’s access stops at season five but the series is regularly among its 10 most streamed shows and it will add the rest once rights are available.

Netflix already has proven its interest in picking up US broadcast series for global streaming, including Riverdale, Designated Survivor, Frequency and No Tomorrow, and has secured another AllAccess flagship, Star Trek: Discovery.