‘The Good Doctor’ Legal Spinoff ‘The Good Lawyer’ With Female Lead In Works At ABC As Backdoor Pilot

Nellie Andreeva
·5 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: After expanding one popular long-running procedural drama, The Rookie, with a planted spinoff for next season, ABC is looking to do it for another, The Good Doctor with an embedded episode. I hear the network is developing legal offshoot The Good Lawyer, from The Good Doctor executive producers/co-showrunners David Shore and Liz Friedman, Sony Pictures TV and Shore’s studio-based Shore Z Prods. ABC Signature is co-producing.

Like with the Nathan Fillion-starring The Rookie, the spinoff of the Freddie Highmore-headlined The Good Doctor will have a female lead and will be introduced as a backdoor pilot during The Good Doctor‘s upcoming sixth season, I hear. Reps for ABC and Sony TV declined comment, and deals are still being worked out.

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According to sources, two characters from The Good Lawyer, the lead Joni as well as Janet, will appear in Episode 613 of The Good Doctor, with the roles currently casting. (The upcoming series The Rookie: Feds, starring Niecy Nash, originated as a two-episode backdoor pilot on The Rookie this past spring.)

. - Credit: Sony Pictures Television/Tori McCaleb/AP
. - Credit: Sony Pictures Television/Tori McCaleb/AP

Sony Pictures Television/Tori McCaleb/AP

Written by Shore and Friedman, The Good Lawyer will center on Joni, a 20-something woman who battles OCD but is a brilliant lawyer and gets to be a defense attorney for Dr. Shaun Murphy (Highmore) who finds himself in legal trouble.

Relatively new to her upscale law firm, Joni, who is funny, eager, self-aware and a bit anxious, is part of Shaun’s (Highmore) legal defense team. Despite breezing through law school and her Bar exam, Joni’s OCD symptoms take a severe toll on her personal and professional life. Living with OCD, Joni has never wanted to be treated differently and is often embarrassed of her symptoms. She is a great lawyer, using her attention to detail, compulsive over-thinking and analytical skills as a superpower, but was forced to threaten to sue the firm (for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act) when they tried to fire her because of her peculiar behaviors. The role is listed as open to all ethnicities and abilities.

Armed with a fierce intellect and a dry, rapier wit, Janet is a highly regarded attorney and partner at the firm. A seasoned veteran, Janet has represented Dr. Glassman (Richard Schiff) in several legal matters over the course of 30 years; so Glassman turns to her to represent his protégé Shaun (Highmore). Having seen it all, Janet has developed a cynical side, which contributed to her attempt to fire Joni. But when Shaun declares that he wants Joni to represent him, Janet is forced to give Joni the rope to possibly hang both of them.

While Janet and Joni resemble the mentor-mentee duo of Glassman and Shaun on The Good Doctor, the dynamic between the two characters is very different, at least on the outset.

Friedman executive produces The Good Lawyer alongside Shore and Erin Gunn who exec produce for Shore Z. Sony TV and ABC Signature, which co-produce The Good Doctor, also co-produce The Good Lawyer.

Expanding The Good Doctor has been a goal for ABC, which has done so for its other long-running dramas with procedural elements, Grey’s Anatomy (with Station 19) and The Rookie (with The Rookie: Feds.) The network and Sony TV are believed to have previously explored a potential spinoff centered around popular original cast member Antonia Thomas’s Dr. Claire Browne working for Doctors Without Borders, which was set up in Thomas’ final episode as a series regular in 2021. Taking a legal route with The Good Lawyer gives the producers a clear procedural structure, which is very attractive to broadcast networks these days as those drama series tend to hold up the best in linear viewing.

In an interview with Deadline last year, Sony TV Studios’ former President Jeff Frost addressed a potential The Good Doctor spinoff.

“I think it’s always a possibility; it’s something we would love to see happen,” he said. “Obviously we don’t want to do anything that is going to impact the mothership but at the same time we do think there is a potential for that.”

Sony TV has expanded two other long-running broadcast series, The Goldbergs and The Blacklist, into franchises with spinoff series, Schooled and The Blacklist: Redemption, respectively, and is currently doing it with its hit streaming/premium network dramas The Boys and Outlander as spinoff chatter also surrounds the studio’s hit Netflix comedy Cobra Kai.

In a potential precursor to an expansion that would require more manpower at the top, longtime The Good Doctor executive producer Friedman in May was named co-showrunner for Season 6 alongside series developer and executive producer Shore, who had served as showrunner on the past five seasons.

The Good Lawyer is an original concept as the Korean drama The Good Doctor, which was adapted for the U.S. by Shore, did not have spinoffs. The legal drama does draw parallels to Extraordinary Attorney Woo, a new Korean series, which has been attracting big audiences for Netflix. It centers on a young woman with Autism out of law school who joins a big law firm and tries to fit in.

I hear The Good Lawyer was already in the works when Extraordinary Attorney Woo debuted earlier this summer. Additionally, while The Good Doctor’s Shaun Murphy has savant syndrome, which puts him on the Autism spectrum, The Good Lawyer is not expected to involve Autism, instead going for a protagonist with OCD ala detective Adrian Monk.

The Good Lawyer is the second high-profile hourlong legal series with a 20-something female lead eyed by ABC for next season, along with an Ally McBeal sequel, which is currently in development.

Friedman is repped by CAA and attorney Jeannie Newman at Hansen, Jacobson & Teller and Newman. Shore is repped by CAA, The Shuman Co. and Edelstein, Laird & Sobel.

 

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