Following the recent finale of its inaugural season, Watson is taking some extra time off to prepare for his next case. CBS surprisingly left the new Morris Chestnut-led medical drama with a Sherlock Holmes twist off its fall schedule and will instead bring the series back in 2026. When it returns in January, it will also begin airing an hour later in the 10 p.m. spot. The delay means fans will have to wait just a bit longer to find out what comes next after Moriarty (Randall Park) met his end, and the network’s Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach is opening up about why the hot new title is being left in the waiting room for the upcoming season.
Reisenbach spoke with Deadline after CBS unveiled its fall schedule to explain some of the final decisions made regarding the roster. Watson was a curious absence after the overall success of its first run. Despite earning mixed reviews, complete with a 50% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics, the premiere was, at the time of the renewal in March, the most-watched scripted episode of television on the network throughout the 2024-25 season, while the series as a whole was averaging 6.79 million viewers. With the help of the NFL‘s AFC Championship as a lead-in, the show’s debut was so impressive that it managed to top the ever-popular Tracker with 18.7 million viewers via Nielsen’s measurement. Alas, CBS struggled to find a place for it in the end.
“We’ll definitely be pushing viewers to binge it on Paramount+ in the meantime,” Reisenbach said. “But there truly was a lack of room on the schedule. You look at that schedule, there’s no other real logical place for it.” There’s very little leeway at the network between keeping mainstays like the Monday comedy block and Tuesday NCIS nights intact, while also introducing new shows like the Fire Country spin-off Sheriff Country and the Blue Bloods offshoot Boston Blue. Sunday is also out of the question thanks to a combination of the Yellowstone spin-off, Y: Marshals, starring original series veteran Luke Grimes, and an unwillingness to put an original scripted series in the 10 p.m. timeslot in the fall for fear of NFL games running long. When it does come back to CBS, though, Resisenbach believes it’ll benefit greatly from a spot after Tracker and the newly established Taylor Sheridan show:
“I’m fairly confident in Tracker and Y: Marshals being very, very big lead-ins for Watson. Watson does really, really well for us on streaming as well. So we expect that viewers who might not catch it at 10 o’clock will catch on streaming because it’s had such a loyal fan base over on Paramount+. We think it’s the best of both worlds.”
via Collider