https://tvline.com/2020/12/03/super-bowl-55-queen-latifah-equalizer-premiere/
CBS announced that the reboot of the classic 1980s procedural starring Latifah as an enigmatic woman who uses her extensive skills will debut after Super Bowl LV on Feb. 7, followed by a special edition of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after the late local news. The Equalizer will make its timeslot debut the following Sunday, Feb. 14, at 8 p.m.
The Equalizer debuts to 20.4 million, the lowest-ever viewership in the post-Super Bowl timeslot (https://www.thewrap.com/the-equalizer-premiere-post-super-bowl-ratings-viewers-queen-latifah-cbs/)
The Queen Latifah-led reboot got a late start, premiering at 10:39 p.m. ET after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' blowout win over the Kansas City Chiefs. Viewership could rise in delayed viewing, but the 20.4 million is down 14% from last year's post-Super Bowl show The Masked Singer.
As a Black female action star, Queen Latifah's The Equalizer role is a rarity (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-02-07/the-equalizer-queen-latifah-super-bowl-black-action-heroines)
Black female action stars used to be a staple of pop-culture, from Teresa Graves in the 1974-1975 ABC crime drama Get Christie Love! to Pam Grier's 1970s Blaxploitation films. During the Blaxploitation era, Black women were “seen as more built for bodily strength, and it was less of a risk to put them in those action roles,” said Jeffrey Brown, associate professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. But when that era passed, he said, Hollywood found it more fashionable to cast “glamorous, petite, upper-middle-class white women as action stars. They supplanted the Black women who had paved the way.” Andrew Marlowe, who co-created The Equalizer reboot with Terri Miller, is excited that viewers will finally be able to root for a Black female action hero again. “It’s long past time to be able to see these characters on TV in these roles,” said Marlowe. “It’s an exciting cultural moment. We hope that in doing so, the show can find its success and we can normalize it. It’s very odd that we haven’t been able to see this before. Black women should be portrayed as the interesting, warm, powerful, complicated people that they are.”
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The Equalizer shows CBS has been listening to critics of its "copaganda" shows (https://slate.com/culture/2021/02/equalizer-queen-latifah-cbs-black-lives-matter-super-bowl.html): "The Equalizer is one of the first CBS procedurals to premiere since last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests," says June Thomas. "Back then, some critics dinged CBS, which has long dominated the ratings with cop-worshipping dramas, for the network’s tepid response to the racial reckoning. This show, which features a Black Robyn Hood at its center, and a Black male cop whose commitment to justice has him chafing against the system he’s part of, was greenlighted before George Floyd was killed, but its timing couldn’t be better."
A reminder that Queen Latifah is just the third Black female to lead a drama series on NBC, ABC, CBS or Fox (https://www.salon.com/2021/02/07/the-equalizer-super-bowl-queen-latifah-cbs/): Latifah follows in the footsteps of Get Christie Love!'s Teresa Graves, Scandal's Kerry Washington, How to Get Away with Murder's Viola Davis and All Rise's Simone Missick.
Executive producer Debra Martin Chase says Latifah's Robyn McCall was developed as a Black woman (https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/02/07/queen-latifah-equalizer-super-bowl/): "We said, ‘No, we're going to make her a Black woman, not just a woman who happens to be Black,” says Chase. “It’s been a lot of honesty that has gone into creating this show. And I hope it shows. I think it shows.”
The Equalizer halts production over a positive coronavirus test (https://deadline.com/2021/02/the-equalizer-pauses-production-positive-covid-19-test-1234690684/)
The New Jersey-based CBS action drama is pausing production out of an abundance of caution after yesterday's positive test, which came a day after its big post-Super Bowl premiere.