Here’s Why Andy Griffith Chose ‘Matlock’ Over Returning to Mayberry
The 1970s weren’t kind to Andy Griffith. After the monster success of The Andy Griffith Show in the previous decade, the comic actor’s follow-up projects, from Headmaster to The New Andy Griffith Show to Salvage 1, were single-season flops. It got so bad that an appearance on The Love Boat seemed like a godsend.
Then, in the mid-1980s, two opportunities represented a turn of fortune. First was Matlock, NBC’s attempt to capitalize on the success of CBS’ Murder, She Wrote. If crime mysteries fronted by graying showbiz faces were in vogue, then maybe Griffith could win those same viewers. A pilot was filmed in Atlanta, and the stage was set for Griffith’s comeback.
Around the same time, the 25th anniversary of The Andy Griffith Show was reviving interest in Mayberry. Griffith and Don Knotts had often talked about a reunion, but “they both agreed that unless it could be great, they didn’t want to do it,” said Knotts’ second wife, Loralee, in the book Andy and Don.
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With Matlock as his potential new meal ticket, Griffith saw an opportunity. He agreed to take part in Return to Mayberry, a made-for-TV reunion movie in which Barney Fife finally gets to marry his beloved Thelma Lou. Griffith hoped enough people would watch to convince NBC to greenlight his new show.
People watched. Twenty-eight million viewers tuned in to Return to Mayberry, making it the most watched TV movie of 1986. The Matlock pilot, airing the previous month, did nearly as well.
Griffith’s plan had worked, but maybe too well. The crazy success of Return to Mayberry kindled interest in rebooting his old show. The built-in audience, reinforced by constant reruns on basic cable in the early 1980s, virtually guaranteed that Sheriff Andy Taylor had a home on America’s TV sets if Griffith wanted to return.
But he knew that Knotts and company would have a hard time recreating the sitcom’s charm. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think we could make the old Mayberry show a success week after week,” Griffith told The Birmingham News, via MeTV. “It was so hard to do the first one. I don’t know that we could make it happen every time.”
Instead, Griffith opted for the new challenges of Matlock. “He was enormously appreciative because his career at that point was pretty moribund,” remembered producer Dean Hargrove in Andy and Don. “This series was really bringing him back to life.”
And once Matlock was a success, Griffith tried to have his cake and eat it too. He began to introduce comedy bits into the show. The actors who played Helen Crump and Thelma Lou showed up. By its third season, Griffith announced, “I want to put Don on the show.”
Producers weren’t nuts about what they called the “Mayberry-ization” of the show, but Knotts was brought on as Ben Matlock’s pal anyway. Knotts’ character, Les Calhoun, popped in and out over four seasons, but they never recaptured that Mayberry magic.
“Matlock wasn’t like The Andy Griffith Show. You couldn’t stop for these little comedy scenes that didn’t go anywhere,” Griffith later lamented. “It didn’t work.”
