KATHRYN FLETT'S My TV week: It's Midsomer Murders in Manhattan By Kathryn Flett For Weekend Magazine Published: 22:31 BST, 26 July 2024 | Updated: 22:31 BST, 26 July 2024 e-mail View comments ELSBETH Tuesdays, SKY Witness/Now Rating: If you were a fan of The Good Wife (2009-2016, RIP) or its spin-off The Good Fight (2017-2022, started strongly, deteriorated dramatically and therefore not missed quite so much, at least by me) then you will, I’m sure, remember the occasional appearances of Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston). She was the quirky, chaotic, amusingly socially inept lawyer with the idiosyncratic dress sense and razor-sharp mind who probably should have been a detective. Now given her own spin-off by TGW/TGF creators/writers, husband-and-wife team Robert and Michelle King, Elsbeth has been relocated from Chicago to New York, ostensibly to investigate the New York Police Department (NYPD) after some controversial arrests.
As she shadows their work, Elsbeth simultaneously deploys her innate detective skills and starts solving crimes. A so-called ‘howcatchem’, the inverted detective story format means we know all along who the murderer is; the fun is in watching Elsbeth work it out. Elsbeth (pictured), who first appeared in The Good Wife which ran from 2009-2016, has been given her own spin-off show set in New York Ring any bells? Yup, the blueprint is Columbo, while the genre’s most recent incarnation was Sky’s Poker Face, in which Natasha Lyonne played a quir.