What Show Comes On After The Super Bowl? CBS Airs One-Hour Crime Drama In Key Slot

After the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs face off in the Super Bowl, CBS will be breaking the Hollywood norm by airing a new crime drama after the postgame show.

The Super Bowl is often a network's opportunity to promote a show, as roughly 100 million viewers will watch the game. Often the show is one that has a key timeslot for the network.

This year, CBS has decided on “The Equalizer,” which stars Queen Latifah as Robyn McCall, a former CIA operative who uses her skills to get justice for innocent people who find themselves in dire circumstances.

The series will mark another reboot of the 1980 TV show starring Edward Woodward as Robert McCall. “The Equalizer” was initially remade into two movies starring Denzel Washington as a retired CIA operative with a mysterious past.

“What Denzel did with the feature films has been incredible. If anything, he set a bar in a way but also gave us a lot of room to go a completely different direction,” Latifah said while appearing on a virtual panel during the Television Critics’ Association winter press tour.

Latifah is now the fourth Black woman to headline an hour-long network drama, following in the footsteps of Teresa Graves, Kerry Washington and Viola Davis.

The decision by CBS to air "The Equalizer" suggests it has confidence in the one-hour show's potential.

In the past, network executives would occasionally allow a new series to debut after the Super Bowl, but it would usually be a reality show. The last scripted pilot to air after the Super Bowl was the ABC adventure drama “Extreme” in 1995.

“The Equalizer” reboot is an exception, with CBS choosing not to promote an established show after the Super Bowl. In 2016, CBS showed "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" but in 2019, the network went with the season premiere of the reality talent competition "The World's Best" to follow the Super Bowl.

CBS will regularly air "The Equalizer" on Sunday nights.