Update from CBS about Matlock drew a large audience for the premiere on Sunday evening.

The Kathy Bates-starring legal drama — which shares a name and basic premise with the ’80s and ’90s series starring Andy Griffith, but little else — drew 7.73 million viewers for its debut. Excluding shows that debuted after the Super Bowl, that’s the largest series premiere audience for a CBS show in more than five years (since The Code followed a NCIS delivery in April 2019).

The 7.73 million viewers would also rank in the top five of CBS’s ratings for scripted shows last season (again, excluding the post-Super Bowl premiere for Tracker).

Matlock delivered the largest same-day audience of the handful of network shows that premiered a season or series last week (the Nielsen-measured 2024-25 season officially begins Monday). Among the others, ABC’s Dancing with the stars attracted the largest total audience (4.97 million viewers), slightly more than Survivor (4.72 million) on CBS. The two shows tied for the highest ratings among adults 18-49 at 0.73, which equates to about 980,000 people in that age group.

High potential followed DWTS on ABC September 17 with 3.59 million viewers, a lot more than The Good Doctorthe same-day average (2.48 million) in the Tuesday evening spot last spring.

Reviews for the premiere of Rescue: Hi-Surf on Fox Sunday — which followed the network’s NFL doubleheader — were unavailable at the time of publication. Earlier in the month, the network’s animated series Universal base boys premiered to 4.03 million viewers in the NFL preview, but dropped below 1 million viewers for its second episode.