Now streaming and on DVD: Family matters in 'So Help Me Todd'

Surprising? Not on network television. Other series have stopped without closure and then left executives scratching their heads when the replacement series got worse ratings.

“Todd” held promise, particularly since it bridged two generations.

Marcia Gay Harden and Skylar Astin had fun playing a mother/son team investigating cases in her blue-chip law firm in Portland.

Astin’s Todd wasn’t exactly dealing from the top of the deck. He lost his license as an investigator and didn’t know where to turn. Mom usually bailed him out but now she was in a “situation”: her husband had disappeared.

Together, Todd brought mom up to speed with new technology; Mom gave Todd the credibility to branch out on his own.

Created by Scott Prendergast and loosely based on his own life, the series fit well in the CBS family – not too taxing but filled with enough mystery to keep a viewer engaged.

What really worked was the chemistry between Harden and Astin. She was like Christine Baranski in “The Good Fight”; he was a junior Martin Short in “Only Murders in the Building.” The two played off each other well and mined the cases for humor and pathos.

While CBS has a similar series this fall in “Matlock” (starring Kathy Bates), there was a little more buy-in when the business became a family affair.

To complicate matters, Todd’s sister (Madeline Wise) succeeded where he hadn’t. He lived in her garage; she took both sides in family arguments.

At the office, Todd was at odds with a co-worker who didn’t approve of his unorthodox (read: illegal) ways of getting information. Lyle (smartly played by Tristen J. Winger) held the line even when mom wouldn’t.

In the first season, there was a “Perry Mason” approach to solving crimes. It worked because there was a learning curve that managed to include everything from MP9 files to podcasts.

In the second, the two were able to move beyond the quirks and dig into other problems, familial and social.

The cast’s facility with physical comedy lifted “So Help Me Todd” just when it seemed like it could go down a road CBS had already been.

It was “Murder, She Wrote” with two generations. Luckily, there are DVD collections (the second one out this week) that preserve the playfulness that seems in short supply on network television.

Embrace it while you can.