Two decades since David E. Kelly’s Ellie McBeal ended its five-season run on Fox, the Emmy-winning legal drama series starring Calista Flockhart is planning a comeback with a sequel. The “Deadline” website reported yesterday that the series is in development at ABC and that the network has approached Flockhart to play her character again, when in addition she may also be one of the executive producers of the series.
According to the report, the series will follow a young black woman who joins the law firm from the original series straight out of law school, and is expected to be the daughter of Ellie McBeal’s partner from the series, Renee Reddick, played by Lisa Nicole Carson.
In Ellie McBeal, which aired on Fox from 1997-2002, Flockhart starred as Ellie, a lawyer who works at the Boston law firm Cage & Fish with her ex-lover and his wife. The main focus of the drama was the romantic and personal lives of the main characters, and legal proceedings were often used as a means of advancing the plot.
The series won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1999, as well as a number of other important awards. It was known for an impressive cast led by Flockhart and featuring Courtney Thorne-Smith, Greg German, Jane Krakowski, Peter McNicol, Gil Blues, Lucy Lowe, Portia de Rossi, Lisa Nicole Carson as mentioned above and musician Wanda Shepherd. In addition, the series gave Robert Downey Jr. one of his first major roles.