Elsbeth: The Dynamic New ‘Columbo’ We Never Realized We Craved

Elsbeth, a new procedural that premieres Thursday night on CBS, is the second official spinoff of The Good Wife, an Emmy-winning legal drama. It is a sequel to The Good Fight, which ended in 2022 after six seasons of ripped-from-the-headlines cases and Christine Baranski looking stunning in designer power blazers.

Elsbeth, like The Good Fight, stars a fan favorite character who was first introduced 14 years ago in the first season of The Good Wife: Elsbeth Tascioni, an unusual and frequently misjudged attorney portrayed by Carrie Preston, who won an Emmy for her performance in 2013.

When it comes to their love of spinoffs, “we’ll be down to the smallest character by the end,” Robert King, who co-created all three series with his wife, Michelle, jokes with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “Next, it will be David Paymer’s judge,” he says, referring to the character from The Good Wife’s pilot. “It will just be Gus!”With an exclamation point.”

While The Good Fight was very much a continuation of The Good Wife, which starred Julianna Margulies and aired from 2009 to 2016, what’s striking about Elsbeth is that, aside from the central character, it’s completely different from its predecessors. “I never thought of it as a Good Wife spinoff,” Michelle King admits.

The universe separates this from The Good Fight and The Good Wife, according to Robert King. “The Good Fight was a response to Trump’s erratic behavior. The Good Wife was primarily about the law and how it can corrupt. This isn’t that. This is about seeing the elites brought down by Elsbeth, who appears to be a non-elite. She enjoys cats. She adores The Lion King. She’d probably read Glamour magazine from cover to cover just to see the photos. “She’s that type of person.”

In other words, if you know who Elsbeth is, you’ll get the show’s particular flavor, which is a funny twist on a Columbo-style police procedural rather than a descendant of The Good Wife’s politics-heavy, legal-thriller universe.

“I like to think of this as a comedy,” Preston told Obsessed. “I like to imagine that a large, bright peacock has been put down in the middle of a police investigation. This show is quite similar to previous shows like Columbo, Murder She Wrote, or any other procedural with an unorthodox character in the heart. Monk was like that. Knowing that I am following in the footsteps of those types of personalities makes me feel a little better.”

Elsbeth Tascioni—a colorful name that matches the colorful character—leaves her lucrative profession in Chicago for New York City to serve as an attorney supervisor for the NYPD. Elsbeth is, by all accounts, eccentric or off-kilter. She is unwaveringly optimistic and earnest—a rarity in the legal profession—going so far as to bring cookies to an interview with a guy she suspects of murder. Her costumes are colorful and vibrant, a clash of colors, patterns, and materials that convert her into a walking patchwork quilt—especially when the three tote bags she carries with her at all times are taken into account.

Her manner of thinking and evaluating events is as unique as her style, allowing her to see things that others may not and provide insights that others would never consider. These skills, it turns out, are useful for solving crimes and cracking cases. Because of her fashion and demeanor, Elsbeth is frequently underestimated or discarded, which she takes advantage of when confronted with formidable opponents or suspects. Michelle King states, “Her quirkiness is also her superpower.”

“She is very decidedly herself in all situations,” Preston says. “She does not attempt to censor herself or change who she is. She occasionally takes advantage of this, and it’s entertaining to watch her change direction on a dime. You assume she’s off in the ozone, lost in how cool your spectacles are, but she’s actually solving the case and relying on her brains and wit.”

Elsbeth’s personality and the innate comedy that comes with it stand in stark contrast to the nature of the cases she helps solve each week. Thursday’s debut, for example, starts Columbo-style, with the entire first act dedicated to the crime. We see a professor at an arts school (played menacingly by Preston’s former True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer) preparing and carrying out the murder and cover-up of one of his students, who was about to expose him as a sexual predator on campus.

It could be jarring when Elsbeth finally makes her comedic debut, arriving at the Lincoln Center crime scene on one of those red double-decker sightseeing buses while still wearing the foam Statue of Liberty crown she bought in her eagerness to be in New York City. But there’s something contagious about Elsbeth—and a careful balancing of tone on the part of Preston, the Kings, and showrunner Jonathan Tolan—that makes the series’ disturbing-meets-wacky vibe work.

“When Elsbeth comes in, there’s a little bit of zing of pleasure of trying to figure out how she’s going to size up someone who seemed to be so on the ball and so bad,” says King.

“It’s like we’re shining up the Big Apple,” Preston says. “We’re taking New York City’s black, white, and gray environment and splashing it with color. It provides us with a fresh viewpoint on this magnificent city, as well as on the well-worn genre of the police procedural.”

When the Kings approached Preston 14 years ago about portraying Elsbeth on The Good Wife, it was the first time she had been directly offered a role. She was on True Blood at the time and had recently completed the film Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Robert King saw her in the film and believed she would be ideal for the role. The only hitch was that Preston, who had always been a blonde, had recently colored her hair red for True Blood.

“I had to call them and say, ‘Yes, of course I would love to do this, but you should probably take a look at me now, because I don’t look anything like that anymore,'” Preston said. The Kings, of course, accepted the red hair. “Then the red hair simply became a part of how I’m seen in the profession. So, whatever works. “You do whatever it takes to keep working.”

The name “Elsbeth Tascioni” was likewise a fluke. When Preston originally received the script, the character’s name was Elsbeth Mann. She memorized all of her lines in this way. She only discovered when she arrived on set that the name did not clear legal, thus another last name was chosen as a replacement. But that one did not clear either, therefore Tascioni was created as an alternative. According to the source, it was the name of Robert and Michelle King’s daughter’s fifth grade teacher at the time. “When we were doing The Good Wife, to involve our daughter more in the process, we had her name a lot of the characters,” Robert explains. “So almost every lawyer is from her third or fourth grade class.”

While characters from The Good Wife and The Good Fight make brief appearances in Elsbeth, the series’ entire goal is to distinguish itself from that show’s tone. Fans of The Good Fight, in particular, marveled at how prescient the show was when it came to stories involving the Trump White House, the alt-right, and corrupt internet tycoons, leaving viewers wondering how the authors saw the future.

“We’re working on other shows that will scratch that itch, but Elsbeth, we thought, was like cotton candy for the soul,” says King. “Especially, oh my God, with this last year, it’s been a respite.”

“I think Robert and Michelle really wanted to create something that was like a little spoonful of sugar to coat some of the darker things that they had been exploring in these other shows,” Preston said.

Preston says she is grateful to be the provider of that spoonful of sugar and, for the first time in her career, the project leader. “It’s not that I wouldn’t have appreciated getting a show like this when I was younger, but I think I appreciate it more now because it is quite miraculous for anybody, but especially someone who’s not 20,” she said. “This is a gift. It’s a little bit of a miracle.” “Elsbeth” is the quirky new ‘Columbo’ we didn’t realize we needed.

Elsbeth, a new procedural that premieres Thursday night on CBS, is the second official spinoff of The Good Wife, an Emmy-winning legal drama. It is a sequel to The Good Fight, which ended in 2022 after six seasons of ripped-from-the-headlines cases and Christine Baranski looking stunning in designer power blazers.

Elsbeth, like The Good Fight, stars a fan favorite character who was first introduced 14 years ago in the first season of The Good Wife: Elsbeth Tascioni, an unusual and frequently misjudged attorney portrayed by Carrie Preston, who won an Emmy for her performance in 2013.

When it comes to their love of spinoffs, “we’ll be down to the smallest character by the end,” Robert King, who co-created all three series with his wife, Michelle, jokes with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “Next, it will be David Paymer’s judge,” he says, referring to the character from The Good Wife’s pilot. “It will just be Gus!”With an exclamation point.”

While The Good Fight was very much a continuation of The Good Wife, which starred Julianna Margulies and aired from 2009 to 2016, what’s striking about Elsbeth is that, aside from the central character, it’s completely different from its predecessors. “I never thought of it as a Good Wife spinoff,” Michelle King admits.

The universe separates this from The Good Fight and The Good Wife, according to Robert King. “The Good Fight was a response to Trump’s erratic behavior. The Good Wife was primarily about the law and how it can corrupt. This isn’t that. This is about seeing the elites brought down by Elsbeth, who appears to be a non-elite. She enjoys cats. She adores The Lion King. She’d probably read Glamour magazine from cover to cover just to see the photos. “She’s that type of person.”

In other words, if you know who Elsbeth is, you’ll get the show’s particular flavor, which is a funny twist on a Columbo-style police procedural rather than a descendant of The Good Wife’s politics-heavy, legal-thriller universe.

“I like to think of this as a comedy,” Preston told Obsessed. “I like to imagine that a large, bright peacock has been put down in the middle of a police investigation. This show is quite similar to previous shows like Columbo, Murder She Wrote, or any other procedural with an unorthodox character in the heart. Monk was like that. Knowing that I am following in the footsteps of those types of personalities makes me feel a little better.”

Elsbeth Tascioni—a colorful name that matches the colorful character—leaves her lucrative profession in Chicago for New York City to serve as an attorney supervisor for the NYPD. Elsbeth is, by all accounts, eccentric or off-kilter. She is unwaveringly optimistic and earnest—a rarity in the legal profession—going so far as to bring cookies to an interview with a guy she suspects of murder. Her costumes are colorful and vibrant, a clash of colors, patterns, and materials that convert her into a walking patchwork quilt—especially when the three tote bags she carries with her at all times are taken into account.

Her manner of thinking and evaluating events is as unique as her style, allowing her to see things that others may not and provide insights that others would never consider. These skills, it turns out, are useful for solving crimes and cracking cases. Because of her fashion and demeanor, Elsbeth is frequently underestimated or discarded, which she takes advantage of when confronted with formidable opponents or suspects. Michelle King states, “Her quirkiness is also her superpower.”

“She is very decidedly herself in all situations,” Preston says. “She does not attempt to censor herself or change who she is. She occasionally takes advantage of this, and it’s entertaining to watch her change direction on a dime. You assume she’s off in the ozone, lost in how cool your spectacles are, but she’s actually solving the case and relying on her brains and wit.”

Elsbeth’s personality and the innate comedy that comes with it stand in stark contrast to the nature of the cases she helps solve each week. Thursday’s debut, for example, starts Columbo-style, with the entire first act dedicated to the crime. We see a professor at an arts school (played menacingly by Preston’s former True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer) preparing and carrying out the murder and cover-up of one of his students, who was about to expose him as a sexual predator on campus.

It could be jarring when Elsbeth finally makes her comedic debut, arriving at the Lincoln Center crime scene on one of those red double-decker sightseeing buses while still wearing the foam Statue of Liberty crown she bought in her eagerness to be in New York City. But there’s something contagious about Elsbeth—and a careful balancing of tone on the part of Preston, the Kings, and showrunner Jonathan Tolan—that makes the series’ disturbing-meets-wacky vibe work.

“When Elsbeth comes in, there’s a little bit of zing of pleasure of trying to figure out how she’s going to size up someone who seemed to be so on the ball and so bad,” says King.

“It’s like we’re shining up the Big Apple,” Preston says. “We’re taking New York City’s black, white, and gray environment and splashing it with color. It provides us with a fresh viewpoint on this magnificent city, as well as on the well-worn genre of the police procedural.”

When the Kings approached Preston 14 years ago about portraying Elsbeth on The Good Wife, it was the first time she had been directly offered a role. She was on True Blood at the time and had recently completed the film Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Robert King saw her in the film and believed she would be ideal for the role. The only hitch was that Preston, who had always been a blonde, had recently colored her hair red for True Blood.

“I had to call them and say, ‘Yes, of course I would love to do this, but you should probably take a look at me now, because I don’t look anything like that anymore,'” Preston said. The Kings, of course, accepted the red hair. “Then the red hair simply became a part of how I’m seen in the profession. So, whatever works. “You do whatever it takes to keep working.”

The name “Elsbeth Tascioni” was likewise a fluke. When Preston originally received the script, the character’s name was Elsbeth Mann. She memorized all of her lines in this way. She only discovered when she arrived on set that the name did not clear legal, thus another last name was chosen as a replacement. But that one did not clear either, therefore Tascioni was created as an alternative. According to the source, it was the name of Robert and Michelle King’s daughter’s fifth grade teacher at the time. “When we were doing The Good Wife, to involve our daughter more in the process, we had her name a lot of the characters,” Robert explains. “So almost every lawyer is from her third or fourth grade class.”

While characters from The Good Wife and The Good Fight make brief appearances in Elsbeth, the series’ entire goal is to distinguish itself from that show’s tone. Fans of The Good Fight, in particular, marveled at how prescient the show was when it came to stories involving the Trump White House, the alt-right, and corrupt internet tycoons, leaving viewers wondering how the authors saw the future.

“We’re working on other shows that will scratch that itch, but Elsbeth, we thought, was like cotton candy for the soul,” says King. “Especially, oh my God, with this last year, it’s been a respite.”

“I think Robert and Michelle really wanted to create something that was like a little spoonful of sugar to coat some of the darker things that they had been exploring in these other shows,” Preston said.

Preston says she is grateful to be the provider of that spoonful of sugar and, for the first time in her career, the project leader. “It’s not that I wouldn’t have appreciated getting a show like this when I was younger, but I think I appreciate it more now because it is quite miraculous for anybody, but especially someone who’s not 20,” she said. “This is a gift. “It’s a small miracle.”

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