Peacock dangles spinoff series Pearson in front of the Suits addicts

Peacock is apparently hoping to take back some initiative in the strange, but undeniable, cultural resurgence surrounding former USA legal drama Suits this summer. (And we have to imagine that there’s at least a bit of resentment in play over at the NBC-affiliated streamer, which hosted Suits in relative quietude for a good long while before a combination of Tik Tok and Netflix transformed the show into the rerun darling of Summer 2023.) Per Deadline, the streaming service has just picked up the rights to the show’s spinoff, the Gina Torres-starring Pearson, which hasn’t been previously available for the baying Suits hounds out there on the internet to easily get their hands on.

Of course, Pearson—which stars Torres as her Suits character, Jessica Pearson, as she trades her law office for the world of Chicago politics—wasn’t exactly a hot-ticket item before all this sudden Suitsthusiasm came around; the show came and went after a single season on USA, with the network handing down a cancellation order for it in late 2019 on the admittedly fair grounds that only about 500,000 people were watching it. Not even carrying the pedigree of a well-regarded and solid performer like Suits (with creator Aaron Korsh teaming up with veteran TV writer Daniel Arkin) could keep the series on the air.

But that was back before Suits fever was sweeping the planet, endangering the lives/streaming queues of millions. It remains to be seen whether the promise of new Suitsiverse content will lure the new converts in, drawn in by the backdoor pilot Pearson got in the original show’s seventh season, but you can’t blame Peacock for trying to leverage the one bit of Suits-adjacent content it doesn’t have to share with its rivals over at Netflix.