48 Fun Facts About Matlock

What is Ben Matlock's profession?

Defense attorney Ben Matlock wins by finding the real killer: most episodes end with him cross-examining a witness until the culprit is exposed on the stand.

In which city does Ben Matlock practise law?

Atlanta. Matlock lives outside the city in a modest farmhouse and likes to walk the crime scene himself, which is usually where he spots the clue everyone else overlooked.

Matlock debuted on which network in March 1986?

NBC ordered the show after its programming chief Brandon Tartikoff saw Griffith play a lawyer in the 1984 miniseries Fatal Vision; a pilot film aired that March and the weekly series followed in the autumn.

Before creating Matlock, Dean Hargrove won an Emmy for his work on which 1970s detective series?

Columbo. Hargrove believed hit shows are defined by one name, 'Lucy, Archie Bunker, Columbo, J.R.', and said he tailored series to their stars, which is how Matlock came to be built around Andy Griffith.

What colour suit does Ben Matlock almost always wear?

Light grey, every time: Griffith said he knew from the start that Matlock 'would wear the same suit all the time', and he found the character so 'cheap and vain' at first that he pushed for rewrites.

What is Ben Matlock's favourite food?

Hot dogs. Matlock charges premium fees yet eats like a man on a budget: for all his apparent wealth, the show writes him as something of a cheapskate.

What retainer does the famously frugal Matlock usually charge his clients?

$100,000 is the standard retainer, but Matlock keeps bending it: one early client pays with her engagement ring, and he takes several cases for nothing.

Which car does Ben Matlock drive throughout the series?

A grey Ford Crown Victoria, swapped for a newer one as the years passed but never for anything flashier: a plain family sedan for one of the priciest lawyers in town.

From which law school did Ben Matlock graduate?

Harvard Law School trained the man behind the folksy manner, a contrast the show leans on: opponents see a slow-talking country lawyer and meet a formidable cross-examiner.

In which animated sitcom do rival candidates for mayor court elderly voters by promising a 'Matlock Expressway'?

The Simpsons. In 'Sideshow Bob Roberts' the winner then routes the new road straight through the Simpsons' own house and gives the family 72 hours to get out.

In which drama does a hustling lawyer copy Ben Matlock's look and folksy manner to win over elderly clients?

Better Call Saul: in the first-season episode 'Alpine Shepherd Boy', Jimmy McGill studies Matlock on TV, then works a retirement home handing out gelatin cups printed with his name and a slogan about wills.

Where does Matlock meet his second law partner, Michelle Thomas, at the start of season two?

London. Ben is in England for a murder trial when he meets Michelle, an American lawyer working there, and she follows him home as his new partner; Nancy Stafford had first auditioned to play his daughter.

Investigator Conrad McMasters, played by Clarence Gilyard Jr., had which two former careers?

Deputy sheriff and rodeo rider Conrad McMasters took over Matlock's undercover legwork in season four, once joining a circus as a roustabout; Gilyard had just played the terrorists' computer expert, Theo, in Die Hard.

Which series did Clarence Gilyard leave Matlock to join in 1993?

Walker, Texas Ranger made Gilyard Ranger Jimmy Trivette, partner to Chuck Norris, for the whole of that show's run; he still came back to Matlock for one farewell guest appearance in season eight.

Which Andy Griffith Show co-star turned up on Matlock as neighbour Les "Ace" Calhoun?

Don Knotts got the part because Griffith went to the producers and told them he wanted him; Ace Calhoun first appears as a client, accused of murdering the salesman who sold him a dud used car.

Brynn Thayer joined the regular cast in season seven as Leanne MacIntyre, who is what to Ben?

His older daughter, never mentioned before, first turns up in the season-six finale; earlier that same season Brynn Thayer had played a wealthy widow whom Ben defended and fell for.

Who played Jerri Stone, the private investigator of Matlock's final season?

Carol Huston's Jerri Stone was Matlock's last investigator, following Tyler Hudson and Conrad McMasters; like them she went undercover, once posing with Ben as a video-dating customer to find a murderer.

Which president gave Andy Griffith the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

George W. Bush joked in November 2005 that his day had already included the Dalai Lama 'and the Sheriff of Mayberry'; Muhammad Ali collected the same medal at that ceremony.

Where was Matlock filmed for its first six seasons?

California hosted the shoot for six seasons, which meant a cross-country commute for Griffith from his home on the North Carolina coast until filming was moved closer to him.

When Matlock moved to ABC, production shifted to studios in which North Carolina city?

Wilmington took over for the last three seasons to spare Griffith a long commute, and its downtown federal building became the courthouse viewers saw on screen.

Which CBS series was spun off from a two-part season-one Matlock episode called "The Don"?

Jake and the Fatman grew out of William Conrad's guest turn as a prosecutor in 'The Don'; renamed McCabe, the character got his own series a year later, and that show in turn launched Diagnosis: Murder.

Soon after Matlock ended, Andy Griffith played the villain General Rancor opposite Leslie Nielsen in which film?

Spy Hard. Griffith said he did not want the part, so he demanded more than double the fee on offer for a week's work; the producers called back the same day and agreed.

Which production outfit, named for a former network president, produced Matlock with Viacom?

The Fred Silverman Company was set up after Silverman, who had held top jobs at all three big networks, left the last of them in 1981; five years on, his new firm handed that same network a hit in Matlock.

Matlock's format is closest to which earlier legal series, whose 1980s TV films came from the same creator?

Perry Mason struck Dean Hargrove, who revived him in TV films from 1985, as 'rather narrow': no home life ever reached the screen. So Hargrove gave Matlock a daughter, a temper and jokes.

Which Matlock cast member later created the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine?

Kari Lizer, Matlock's Cassie Phillips, moved behind the camera as a producer on Will & Grace, then created The New Adventures of Old Christine, which won Julia Louis-Dreyfus a 2006 Emmy.

Which actor played Dr. Mark Sloan opposite Matlock in the Diagnosis: Murder crossover?

Dick Van Dyke had been on Matlock before: in the very first weekly episode he played a judge, an old friend of Ben's, whom Matlock ends up exposing as the killer. A decade later the two met as allies.

Which country star made his TV acting debut as Billy Wheeler, a hitchhiker Ben Matlock hires to paint his house?

Randy Travis. Frugal as ever, Ben takes the hitchhiker on as cheap labour; Travis returned a season later as the same character, now a lottery winner whom Matlock must clear of murder.

Andy Griffith shared a 2008 CMA award for starring in which country singer's video 'Waitin' on a Woman'?

Brad Paisley asked Griffith to play the old man on the bench because, he felt, the actor's personality matched the character's; Griffith speaks the old man's lines in the video.

Andy Griffith was born in 1926 in which North Carolina town?

Mount Airy, widely seen as the model for Mayberry, renamed its stretch of U.S. Highway 52 the Andy Griffith Parkway, and he came home in 2002 for the dedication.

Andy Griffith's 1953 comic monologue has a country parson trying to make sense of what?

A football game. Griffith's bewildered preacher sold so many copies of 'What It Was, Was Football' that a major label reissued it, and within a year he was performing on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Griffith debuted in 1957 as a manipulative drifter-turned-TV star in which Elia Kazan film?

A Face in the Crowd was Griffith's first film, and its Lonesome Rhodes, a drifter drunk on his own fame and influence, is about as far as an actor could get from the gentle sheriff he began playing three years later.

Griffith's Broadway breakthrough came in 1955 as country boy Will Stockdale in which play?

No Time for Sergeants gave Griffith the same part three times over: he played the Air Force draftee on live television, then on Broadway, then in the 1958 film.

Griffith lost the 1960 Tony for Distinguished Musical Actor, for Destry Rides Again, to whom?

Jackie Gleason won for Take Me Along, and Griffith was not the only loser he knew: two of the other nominees, Walter Pidgeon and Robert Morse, were Gleason's own co-stars in that show.

Andy Griffith died in 2012 on which North Carolina island?

Roanoke Island is where Griffith spent several summers acting in The Lost Colony, rising to the part of Sir Walter Raleigh; he made the island his home and was buried there within five hours of his death.

The 2024 Matlock reboot on CBS stars which actress as Madeline "Matty" Matlock?

Kathy Bates plays Madeline 'Matty' Matlock, a wealthy retired lawyer posing as a hard-up widow; the role earned her a 2025 Golden Globe nomination.

In the 2024 Matlock, what is Matty's real reason for joining the law firm Jacobson Moore?

To get justice for her daughter, Ellie, who died of an opioid overdose: Matty believes the firm buried evidence that could have saved her, and the gambling debts she pleads are only a cover story.

Jennie Snyder Urman, who developed the 2024 Matlock, had earlier created which telenovela-inspired comedy-drama?

Jane the Virgin, adapted from a Venezuelan telenovela, ran for five seasons; Urman later brought its star, Gina Rodriguez, onto Matlock as a special guest in the second season.

In the reboot, Matty's boss Olympia Lawrence is played by whom?

Skye P. Marshall's Olympia Lawrence starts out wary of Matty, seeing the gifted newcomer as a threat to her own promotion; by the second season the two are covering for each other.

Three years before Matlock began, which illness left Andy Griffith partly paralysed and facing months of rehabilitation?

Guillain–Barré syndrome struck in 1983 and for a time Griffith could not walk; he made a full recovery, and three years later was back on weekly television as Ben Matlock.

Linda Purl, who left Matlock after one season as Ben's daughter Charlene, had earlier played which sitcom character's girlfriend?

Fonzie. Purl spent a year as Ashley Pfister on Happy Days and gave Matlock a year too, leaving, she said, because the writers 'were just not able to write the character very fully'.

Which actor, son of a Three's Company star, plays senior partner Julian Markston in the 2024 Matlock?

Jason Ritter is the son of John Ritter and grandson of the singing cowboy Tex Ritter; his Julian is the boss's son, which turns his divorce from Olympia into a matter of office politics.

Which veteran actor plays managing partner Howard 'Senior' Markston in the 2024 Matlock?

Beau Bridges plays Howard 'Senior' Markston as a genial patriarch, but the character turns out to be behind the cover-up that Matty joined the firm to expose.

In which 1979 series did Griffith play Harry Broderick, a dreamer who builds a rocket to reach the Moon?

Salvage 1 cast Griffith as a junkman who builds a rocket, the Vulture, to bring back the hardware Apollo crews left on the Moon and sell it for scrap.

Warren Frost, Matlock's Billy Lewis, also played Doc Hayward in which series co-created by his son Mark?

Twin Peaks. On Matlock, Frost's Billy Lewis is the father of Ben's young partner Cliff and nurses an old grudge: Ben once dropped Billy's sister to go off to law school.

Andy Griffith won a Grammy in 1997 for an album of what kind of music?

Gospel hymns. I Love to Tell the Story: 25 Timeless Hymns went platinum and won him the Grammy more than forty years after his first hit record, which had been a comedy monologue.

Who played Cliff Lewis, the inexperienced young lawyer who became Ben's last partner?

Daniel Roebuck had already turned up on Matlock as three other people, a young doctor, a lawyer and a prosecutor, before he joined the cast as Cliff Lewis; he later played Dr. Arzt on Lost.

Which Lost and ER actor plays Edwin Kingston, Matty's husband, in the 2024 Matlock?

Sam Anderson, Bernard on Lost and Dr. Kayson on ER, plays Edwin Kingston, who is in on the scheme from the start: the 'widow' Matty plays at the office goes home to him every night.

In the 2024 Matlock, how does Matty explain her surname around the office?

Like the TV show: the Andy Griffith original exists inside the new series as an old programme, and the running joke is that Matty's younger colleagues have never heard of it.