When the cops and courts can’t help, who do you turn to?
That’s the thinking behind bringing back The Equalizer, a vigilante justice hour starring Queen Latifah. It premieres Sunday after the Super Bowl on CBS and Global. (Canada’s Super Bowl network, CTV, switches instead to their new home reno series Homes Family Values featuring contractor Mike Holmes).
Back in the Reagan era ’80s, CBC launched the original Equalizer, which starred English actor Edward Woodward. His Robert McCall was a middle-aged ex-CIA agent who was now rich enough to help people who were, for one reason or other shut out of the justice system.
The series had a cool, precussion-based opening theme written by Stewart Copeland from The Police.
I was a young TV Guide Canada reporter at the time and attended a CBS Television Critics Association Equalizer session on my very first press tour. Woodward, who’d recently taken time off the series following a heart attack (he died in 2009), was there via satellite, which was kind of a novelty back then.
The original series was pretty bad-ass for network TV. One 1985 episode, “The Lock Box” featuring New Wave singer Adam Ant, was banned after one broadcast due to content that veered over the edge when it came to kinky violence.
advertisement
For the remake, CBS recently held a virtual TCA press session providing access to Latifah and the producers. Executive producer Terri Miller suggested to reporters that this is a hero for today. Latifah agreed, saying she was pumped to play a character who “doesn’t want to equalize for billionaires anymore.”
When I first heard of this revival plus that of a new CBS series spin-off of “Silence of the Lambs” titled Clarice (it starts Feb. 11), the two shows seemed out of step with post-Trump America. This came up on Friday’s Globe Up Close webinar with fellow critic John Doyle as well. Aren’t viewers weary of dark headlines, violence and social unrest?
Or are broadcast networks servicing audiences that need to feel equalized? There is such unrest in America, with citizens in many Red States fed up with untrustworthy politicians and poised to take matters into their own hands. Extremists storm Capitals and mount an insurrection. Back on couches across North America, a new hero emerges — The Equalizer.
The star said as much on the virtual press conference. “It’s time you see Queen Latifah equalize,” she declared. This series revival was created and developed specifically with her in mind.
The producers also suggested Latifah was only the fourth African American woman to headline a broadcast network drama. That seems preposterous in 2021 but it is probably close to true. Teresa Graves (in Get Christie Love (1974-75) is generally regarded as the first; Diahann Carroll in the sitcom Julia (1968-71) was the first weekly series of any kind to star an African American woman in a non stereotypical role. (Canadian Fletcher Markle was a director on Julia). Kerry Washington (Scandal) and Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder) are two contemporary examples, as is Batwoman, starring Javicia Leslie, on The CW.
Cicely Tyson, however, starred as a secretary on the CBS drama East Side/West Side (1963). Alfre Woodard played the president of the United States on the short-lived State of Affairs.
In Canada, network lead character opportunities for African-Canadians have also been rare. Producers of the current CBC drama Diggstown claim Vinessa Antoine, who plays Halifax-based lawyer Marcie Diggs, is the first Black Canadian woman as a series lead in Canada.
Co-starring with Latifah on CBC’s new Equalizer is Chris Noth (Sex and the City), Lorraine Toussaint, Tory Kittles and Adam Goldberg. The series is shot in New Jersey. Production began pre-pandemic, was halted and then resumed with safety precautions in place.
Richard Lindheim, co-creator of the original Equalizer, was shown the new pilot and, according to executive producer Terri Miller, loved it.
“Then he died the next day,” said Miller. The pilot is dedicated to Lindheim. “He gave us his baby.”
The Equalizer premieres Sunday after the Super Bowl on Global as well as CBS before moving to its regular Sunday at 8 p.m. ET slot starting Feb. 14.
