Night Court is an American sitcom, a revival of the series of the same name that originally aired from 1984 to 1992. It premiered on NBC on January 17, 2023.[1] In February 2023, the series was renewed for a second season which then premiered on December 23, 2023.[2][3][4] In May 2024, the series was renewed for a third season which premiered on November 19, 2024.[5][6][7]
Premise
Judge Abby Stone (Melissa Rauch) comes to New York City to take a job as magistrate for Manhattan Criminal Court's night shift – a position once held by her late father Harry Stone. Also part of the night shift are cheerful and eccentric bailiff Donna "Gurgs" Gurganous (Lacretta), and public defender Dan Fielding (John Larroquette) – who had served as a prosecutor in Harry's court, and was convinced by Abby to join her court when the assigned public defender quit on Abby's first day. Dan briefly left to become a judge in his home state of Louisiana, though would later come back as public defender. Court prosecutors include ambitious Olivia Moore (India de Beaufort) and later vengeful ex-con Julianne Walters (Wendie Malick). Court clerks include shy Neil (Kapil Talwalkar), and later harried single father Wyatt (Nyambi Nyambi)
Cast
Main
Melissa Rauch as Abby Stone,[8] the daughter of the late Harry Stone, who fills her father's former position as judge on the night shift at the Manhattan Criminal Court. In "Blood Moon Binga", she learns her full name is Abracadabra Stone, though she believed it was Abigail, the name she uses.
India de Beaufort as Olivia (seasons 1–2),[8][9] the assistant district attorney assigned to Abby's court; at the beginning of season 3, it is explained that Olivia left for a high-paying position with a high powered private law firm.
Kapil Talwalkar as Neil[8] (season 1),[10] Abby's clerk. Left the court and NYC when he reconnected with an old girlfriend and they fell in love again.
Lacretta as Donna "Gurgs" Gurganous,[8] the bailiff for Abby's court
John Larroquette as Dan Fielding,[8] the former assistant district attorney for Harry's court and his best friend, who comes back to serve as the public defender in Abby's court. Formerly a sex-obsessed "ladies' man", Dan settled down in the mid 1990s marrying a woman named Sarah, who died shortly before the revival series began. Despite giving up his skirt chasing ways, he retains his sarcastic wit. Dan briefly leaves Abby's court to become a judge in his home state of Louisiana, though he returns both to New York and his public defender job at the start of the second season. Larroquette reprises his role from the original series.
Nyambi Nyambi as Wyatt Shaw (season 2-present),[a][11] court clerk with great fashion sense who is also a single father.
Wendie Malick as Julianne Walters (season 3;[12] recurring seasons 1–2), the new district attorney who is also a former career criminal intent on ruining Dan's life as revenge for prosecuting her years ago; whether she is still out to destroy Dan or not is unclear as of S3.
Gary Anthony Williams as Flobert,[10] an eccentric judge who substituted for Abby in her absence, and would later serve as clerk in Abby's court in the interim period between Neil's departure and Wyatt's arrival. He now works as a jack of all trades and fill-in DA for the night court regulars.
Abby Stone, daughter of late Judge Harry Stone, takes over the night court. Like her father, she is interested in the defendants as people and wants to take time to administer justice, much to the annoyance of the overworked courthouse staff. When the public defender quits, Abby recruits Dan Fielding, the former assistant district attorney and her father's friend, to fill the role. Dan, who has been working as a process server after losing his wife, is reluctant, but agrees to fill in for a few weeks. Meanwhile, Gurgs tries to track down a courthouse vandal.
Dan, who is used to being a prosecutor, has difficulty caring about his clients. When Abby insists he try harder, Dan bribes Gurgs to interview his clients for him. Only after connecting with a mentally ill defendant does Dan begin to take his work seriously, leading Abby to predict he will stay on for a long time. Meanwhile, Abby encourages the staff to bring their own touches to the courtroom with somewhat disastrous results, Olivia is stalked by a stenographer determined to be her best friend, and the custodian deals with a pigeon infestation.
In her efforts to remedy a defendant's newly chronic criminality, Abby accidentally outs him as an undercover cop. Fearing her personal approach is doing more harm than good, she becomes unrelentingly businesslike in the courtroom. When Dan tries to remedy this overcorrection, Abby holds him in contempt. Dan realizes that Abby's sensitivity to being of service stems from the fact that, like Dan's late wife, Abby is a recovering alcoholic. She confides that her drinking cost her a lot of time with her father, though he lived long enough to see her thrive in recovery. Dan tells her that Harry would never have felt let down by her. She returns to her previous demeanor. Meanwhile, Olivia struggles to adapt when the police officers withdraw the perks she had been enjoying. Believing this is an unreasonable response to the courtroom incident, she confronts the officers, only to inadvertently reveal the ethically questionable perks to an Internal Affairs representative, whose presence was the actual reason for the change.
When Abby learns that Dan is being hit on by multiple women, including his client, she suggests to Dan that he start dating again. He then hits it off with a woman named Julianne (Wendie Malick) who gives him her number. Dan arranges a date. Abby and Neil then go to spy on them, finding Dan alone at the restaurant. Upon learning that Dan didn't even text the woman, Neil sends the message he wrote but didn't send. Upon learning that Julianne is only interested in sex, Dan takes her home, but is only able to talk about his late wife. Julianne admits that she is a career criminal who wanted to ruin Dan's life for prosecuting her years ago, but finds him too pathetic for revenge. Meanwhile Gurgs and Olivia move into an abandoned office, but Olivia has trouble dealing with Gurgs' outgoing personality.
Frustrated by her less-than-ideal living situation, Abby enlists Gurgs to help her use the court system to find a vacant apartment. They locate an ideal place, but the landlord refuses to rent to Abby when he realizes that she is a judge. Abby, increasingly frustrated by her life and not being able to spend time with her long-distance fiancé, takes Dan's advice to stop bottling up her anger and destroys her office. Meanwhile, Olivia runs into a lawyer who almost hired her for a prestigious job until she made a fool out of herself after the interview. Dan, who has memories of an embarrassing interview of his own, encourages Olivia to prove herself in court, which proves a moot point when the lawyer sends someone else to court in her stead.
Gurgs' 12-year-old nephew Xavier and some classmates visit the court. Gurgs is hoping to bond with her nephew, but realizes the children only want to protest the arrest of a social justice activist who was arrested for vandalizing a statue of Christopher Columbus. Abby asks Gurgs to convince the children to stop their protest chants; instead, Gurgs joins them. In the end, Abby conspires with Dan to allow the children to legally protest, and Xavier decides the justice system isn't totally flawed, especially with Gurgs as a part of it. Meanwhile, Olivia spars with a middle school girl who is after her job, Neil takes romantic advice from one of the students, and Dan enjoys having one of the kids as a flunky.
When Abby discovers she and Olivia take the same subway, she's determined to buddy up, so Olivia can teach her to be a 'true New Yorker'. When the train is delayed, Olivia begins to panic. In order to distract her, Abby holds an impromptu trial on the train over a stolen seat. Meanwhile, a substitute judge takes over the court. When Gurgs realizes Abby's heroes Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir are witnesses in a case, she's determined to delay the case until Abby can arrive, while Dan tries to expedite court to make a dinner reservation. Dan ultimately sides with Gurgs and draws out the hearing until Abby can arrive, only to realize she already knows the pair. As a peace offering, Gurgs fixes Dan a meal of the LouisianaBayou food of his youth.
On a blood moon night with weird cases, Abby's mother Gina shows up for a surprise visit. After introducing herself to Abby's staff, it is revealed that she and Dan know each other. Olivia and Neil stumble onto the truth, which was that Gina was arrested years ago for running an illegal gambling ring, and was brought in front of Harry's court with Dan prosecuting. After serving her sentence, Harry and Gina reconnected, fell in love, married, and moved to upstate New York, where Abby (revealed to be short for Abracadabra per Harry's wishes) was born. Abby was unaware of any of this, but forgives her mother for the deception.
Remecca, a podcaster Abby admires, appears in the court as a witness and Abby convinces her to do an episode about the court. When Dan admits to malfeasance during his 1980s run for city council, his career is put in jeopardy. Abby's attempts to smooth things over backfire when she admits that Dan was a friend of her father's, and Remecca threatens to call Abby out for cronyism. Dan agrees to a tell-all interview if Remecca leaves Abby alone. Meanwhile, Olivia convinces Neil to pose as her boyfriend in hopes that Remecca would cover the story of their illicit workplace romance. Remecca's podcast is ultimately cancelled when her sound man exposes her past as an obnoxious shock jock.
Abby's fiance, Rand, shows up to help her train for a marathon. When Abby tries to get Olivia to join her, Rand takes it upon himself to cultivate a friendship between them. Abby and Olivia both overdo their training, causing them to drop out of the race before the first mile. Meanwhile, Dan is furious when the courthouse plans to remove his favorite bench. He eventually admits to Gurgs that it's because he carved his initials in it the day he won his first court case, and it's been an island of stability in his life.
A riot at a bridal expo brings a number of wedding businesspeople to the courthouse, causing Abby to start thinking about her own wedding, which was delayed by her father's death. Olivia and Gurgs vie to be Abby's maid of honor, while a wedding planner becomes obsessed with planning Dan's theoretical wedding. Abby trades a reservation at her dream venue in exchange for performing a wedding that night in the courtroom, but breaks down upon realizing her father will not be at her own wedding. Dan suggests they hold the wedding on the courthouse roof, where he and Abby's father had a lot of good times.
Abby meets district attorney Jeff Dewitt at his exclusive lawyers club to discuss how his tough-on-crime stance is hurting society. Dan - his old associate and fellow club member - shows up to watch out for Abby and realizes Dewitt is planning on using Abby as a soft-on-crime scapegoat for his next election. Abby threatens to expose Dewitt's extramarital affair unless he takes her crime proposals seriously. Meanwhile Olivia (aided by Gurgs and Neil) attempts to gain membership in the club.
An app developer named Brock appears as a witness in court and pitches his new dating app. Dan tries to get the gang to invest, but Abby accidentally reads Brock's sealed file and discovers he was once convicted of fraud. Dan worms the information out of Abby, but still wants to invest (as years ago he missed out on a chance to be a ground floor investor in what would become Facebook), and actually brings one of Brock's old victims on board. Abby gets Brock's records unsealed and reveals his criminal record at the investors' party, but Brock announces he's already cut his past victims in on the profits of his new venture. Brock kicks the courtroom crew out, including Olivia, who was attempting to seduce Brock, and Gurgs, who was pitching her own app. Mark Zuckerberg then buys the app for $2 billion, costing everyone a fortune. Gurgs lets it slip to Abby about Neil's secret crush on her.
Now aware of Neil's crush on her, Abby (with Olivia's help) tries to find a way to tell him she isn't interested without hurting his feelings. They run into Gabby - Neil's high school crush who has similar interests and personality traits as Abby and is coming off a divorce - and attempt to set Neil and Gabby up on a date. The date is successful, but it leaves Abby questioning whether her and Rand will wind up the same way as Gabby and her ex-husband. Meanwhile, Gurgs blames herself after someone in the courtroom throws a drink at Dan, and becomes overly protective of him.
Dan accepts an offer to be a judge in his native Louisiana. He (reluctantly) attends his going away party arranged by Abby and Rand, who are having their own issues - namely Abby getting distracted by work matters, thus neglecting Rand. Among the work matters is an elderly lady who appeared in court on charges she set fire to a nursing home when she lit the candles on her boyfriend's birthday cake. After letting her off with a small fine to pay the damages, Abby is then asked by the lady to help spring her boyfriend from the nursing home. The errant escape attempt results in Abby getting arrested, and calling Dan to bail her out. Meanwhile, Olivia attempts to assist Gurgs to pass the bailiff's supervisor test, and winds up getting her a job at Scotland Yard.
Dan bails Abby out of jail, and prepares to defend her in court, with the case prosecuted by Abby's nemesis Jeff Dewitt, who pressures Olivia to assist him or else lose her job. Even with all that is working against her, Abby resists resorting to Dan's hardball defense tactics, including implicating Louise - the lady from the nursing home to got Abby into the mess to start with - even after Louise wore a wire (at Dewitt's insistence) to implicate Abby. On top of her legal issues, Abby has a heart to heart talk with Rand, and they mutually agree to break off their engagement, as Abby loves her job in NYC, and Rand wants to remain upstate. During Abby's trial, Rand convinces numerous people - including Abby's co-workers and people who appeared before Abby in court - to be character witnesses on her behalf, including Olivia. who puts her friendship with Abby above her own job. Louise testifies that Dewitt had threatened to blackmail her unless she wore the wire to try to implicate Abby. The judge dismisses the charges against Abby. Dan - though having some second thoughts - bids farewell to NYC and goes back to Louisiana to become a judge, where one of the first cases in front of him involves Roz Russell, a former co-worker who served as a bailiff in Harry's court.
Dan and Abby pretend to be Santa and an elf for a girl named Virginia who still believes. Olivia is tormented by a witness who believes she is the Ghost of Christmas Present. Gurgs arranges a video greeting to Dan from his hero, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and is shocked when he shows up in person.
Dan catches up with Roz - who became a private investigator after leaving Harry's court years ago - during her imprisonment in New Orleans (for getting into a fight at her bachelorette party). Roz then asks Dan to come back to New York to assist her in an investigation to see if her fiance was cheating on her. Dan bungles the investigation, leading to him and Roz pleading their case in front of Abby. After paying a fine for damages and having heart-to-heart talks with Roz and Abby, Dan moves back to NYC to resume his role as the defense attorney in Abby's court. Meanwhile, Neil left NYC to move with his girlfriend to Lake Tahoe, leaving Flobert to serve as court clerk, Gurgs regales the court with stories of her London adventures and Olivia tries to establish a side gig as a sports agent.
A city hall bureaucrat named Linda takes delight in denying the court needed amenities following budget cuts. Dan tries sucking up to her by hiring her slacker/gamer son as the new court clerk. Meanwhile, Olivia and Gurgs find a cache of a discontinued, high-caffeine soda in a storeroom, and then sell it at a markup. After Linda's son fails as clerk, Abby and Dan (after chugging several cans of Olivia and Gurgs' soda) then fill out the hundreds of forms Linda forced upon them, giving her no choice but to approve their requests.
A hacker seizes control of the court's computers and the staff's personal devices, threatening via fax (as there was an old fax machine left over in Abby's chamber from her father's time as judge), to expose their secrets unless a certain defendant is found guilty. Dan tries to negotiate with the hacker, Abby tries to delay court, and Gurgs suspects Wyatt, the new court clerk (who turns out just to be a harried single father). The hacker is revealed to be the defendant's teenage son, who wants revenge for his father's philandering.
Upon learning her ex-fiance has a girlfriend, Abby ignores Wyatt's advice to start dating again and instead throws her efforts into creating the perfect pickle. Olivia attempts to date an ambulance-chasing attorney, but is thwarted by his legal partner, who wants him to focus on business. Gurgs is concerned about Dan and Flobert's less than healthy eating habits.
As various cosplaying defendants appear in court stemming from incidents at the NYC Comic-Con, Abby's childhood friend Heather comes to visit, and is forced to confront the fact that she might actually dislike Heather due to her annoying habits. Julianne returns to torment Dan, and he takes advantage of having the numerous costumed Comic-Con attendees around the courtroom to disguise himself as a Klingon from Star Trek to hide from her. But when Julianne (herself dressed as Catwoman) runs into the disguised Dan, they have a conversation where they actually hit it off until she realizes it's Dan, and gets taken away by the police due to starting a fire earlier in the day. Wyatt wants to go to Comic-Con as Morpheus from The Matrix to try to meet women, but instead goes as a character from Paw Patrol as he is forced to take his kids when he could not find a babysitter, and Gurgs instead goes as Morpheus.
Various fashionistas are appearing in court stemming from incidents during New York Fashion Week. Among them is designer Martini Toddwalls, who is hiding in Abby's chambers to avoid the paparazzi. Abby finds him, they hit it off, go on a date, and spend the night together. But after the garish feathered robe Toddwalls designs for her causes Abby to be attacked by a peacock in the courtroom, Abby breaks it off with him. Meanwhile, the fashion critic Dan is representing in court shows him ways to get people to leave him alone, and after Dan accidentally mixed up Olivia's dry cleaning with clothes meant to go to charity (forcing Olivia to wear a 1980s era outfit with shoulder pads to work), they scheme to get her clothes back from the nonprofit discount store they were sent to.
Years after Dan invested $5,000 in a Broadway play that flopped, he is forced to defend the producer of the play in court in order to get Gurgs (who is an admirer of the producer) an audition. Olivia had been bribing a doorman to have her deliveries sent to the Central Park West apartment building where he works to make it appear that she lives in the upscale neighborhood. But when the doorman dies, Olivia feels real sadness at the loss of a friend.
A handsome courtroom observer catches Abby's eye, and it turns out to be Jake, a city human resources official. To try to get closer to him, Abby drags the rest of the court staff to Jake's Saturday HR seminar. During the seminar, Jake talks about how relationships in the workplace shouldn't be too personal, which clashes with Abby's overly personal philosophy, and this difference in opinion causes riffs among the other staff (Olivia and Gurgs regarding shared living quarters, and Dan and Wyatt over saying "thank you"). After an argument, Abby and Jake wind up making out in her chambers. Meanwhile, Flobert is trying to sell time shares in Cleveland to the court staff.
As numerous sailors appear in court due to incidents occurring during NYC Fleet Week, Dan arranges a clandestine poker game in the courthouse basement, and scores big until Gurgs and Olivia (a card sharp in her own right) help the sailors win back their money. Separately, Jasmine - a pushy local PTA president who Wyatt is intimidated by through their dealings regarding Wyatt's kids - also appears in court and when found guilty by Abby starts bullying Wyatt. When Abby tells Wyatt to stand up to Jasmine, Jasmine instead gets turned on, as nobody had ever stood up to her like that before. Eventually, when Jasmine comes on too strong to Wyatt, Abby challenges her to a pop-a-shot contest on a basketball arcade game, which is won by Abby, and thus making Jasmine back off of Wyatt.
Bob and June Wheeler - frequent defendants in Harry's court - appear before Abby for the first time (much to Dan's chagrin), and as in the past, bad luck and calamity follow them (including a section of the courtroom's plaster ceiling falling on Abby's head). Abby - who was fascinated by the stories her father told her about the Wheelers - asks them to put her in touch with a prominent psychic they have connections with to try to contact her dad in the afterlife (even going so far as babysitting the Wheeler's adult daughter in return). Abby eventually meets with the psychic, who turns out to be a fraud. When Dan tries to console Abby over being let down by the psychic, he unknowingly utters a phrase that Abby and Harry used to share between them, leading to he and Abby bonding over Harry's memory (with Dan even becoming a bit emotional remembering his old friend). Meanwhile Olivia buys a house thought to be haunted, and Gurgs asks Wyatt to help remove a perceived curse.
28
12
"The Duke's a Hazard"
Kelly Park
Teleplay by : Lauren Halberg & Alex Sobotowski Story by : Julianne Turkel
Alistair Tully, the British Duke who Gurgs has had a long distance relationship with since her visit to Scotland Yard, arrives in NYC to surprise Gurgs. Gurgs hides in the janitor's closet (which she turned into a mini girl cave), as while she loves the Duke, she doesn't like all of the royal trappings that come with him. Realizing this, Tully asks Abby to show him how "normal people" live to put Gurgs at ease. After the Duke visits the subway and gets tickets to a New York Rangers hockey game, Gurgs appreciates what he is willing to go through to be with her, and accepts the date. Meanwhile Dan and the Duke's butler Duncan renew a feud their families had centuries ago in England, and Olivia attempts to hook up with a palace guard who accompanied the Duke on his trip.
Roz returns to court to deal with a last minute legal issue regarding her wedding venue. When she loses both the case and the venue, she is persuaded by Abby to hold her wedding at the courthouse, to which Roz reluctantly agrees. At the wedding reception, Abby and Jake try to keep their casual relationship from getting too deep, but the ambiance of the wedding proves too much and they become more involved with each other. Jake then introduces Abby to his mother, who reveals Jake was a result of a short relationship she had with someone who works at the courthouse (heavily implied to be Dan). Also at the reception, Dan runs into Katie, the sister of Dan's late co-worker/friend Christine Sullivan. They hit it off at first (with Katie not realizing it was Dan), but once she finds out, she lashes out at him due to his past history with Christine and not attending her funeral. Dan confides in Abby that he wanted a relationship with Christine but once she warmed up to the idea, he began to believe he wasn't good enough for such a good person and he ran away. He said that his relationship with Christine is what made him ready to eventually settle down with his wife Sarah. He also revealed he was at Christine's funeral, but stayed inconspicuous so as not to make a scene given their history. Katie overhears this and makes peace with Dan. Meanwhile, Gurgs, Olivia, Wyatt, and Flobert try to find out who keeps sabotaging Roz's wedding, and it turns out to be Devin, a lawyer who was passed over for a partnership in the law firm run by Roz's fiance.
Abby continues to agonize over the possibility that Jake may be Dan's son. To know for sure, she talks to Jake's mother Susan, However, when Abby finds Susan in a heavily medicated state in the hospital (after Susan had breast enlargement surgery), Susan mentions she also had a relationship with a judge who happened to be a magician (implying Harry, which would mean Abby and Jake would be half siblings). To clear things up once and for all, she collects DNA from herself, Jake, and Dan (including having Flobert hide in a garbage can to collect Dan's DNA from a coffee cup). The DNA tests reveal Harry isn't the father, but Dan may still be in play. Meanwhile, Dan's nemesis Julianne returns, as she has been named the court's new prosecutor (after Olivia left to take a job with a law firm), and though he thinks she is still seeking to torment him, the rest of the court staff seem convinced she has turned over a new leaf.
While Harry was shown not to be Jake's father by the DNA test, the results on Dan were inconclusive, so while another DNA test was being evaluated, Abby tries to get Dan and Jake to bond. After some reluctance, the two men do start bonding over things like fixing Dan's squeaky chair and going tie shopping. They bond so well, that Abby starts feeling left out. Eventually, the DNA test showed that Dan wasn't Jake's father, and while attending a New York Yankees baseball game with Abby (using a ticket originally meant for Jake), Dan confesses he liked the idea of being someone's father, and felt a bit of a father-daughter relationship with Abby. Meanwhile, Gurgs catches Julianne smoking on the courthouse balcony, and after some taunting back and forth, Gurgs tries to get former smoker Wyatt to get Julianne to stop, and instead reignites his old habit. Julianne then confesses she wasn't actually smoking on the balcony outside Abby's office, but was trying to eavesdrop on conversations amongst the staff to try to get an edge in court, but all they ever talked about was their personal lives.
NYC is in the midst of a city wide sanitation worker strike, affecting the court staff in various ways. Courthouse janitor Bert is keeping the courtroom free of garbage, but when Abby makes a flippant remark after learning that Bert throws the trash into a hole in the courthouse basement, Bert takes offense and joins the sanitation worker strike. As trash is piling up in the courthouse (and driving germaphobe/neat freak Wyatt crazy) Abby finds out - through dumpster diving - that Bert's beloved pet alligator died. Abby then arranges a funeral in the basement for the gator, which Bert is thankful for and resumes her work as the sanitation strike had ended. But when the casket encased gator is thrown into the hole where the trash is thrown in, it severed a power line, plunging the city into a blackout. Meanwhile, Dan and Julianne start to bond as they were able to walk the city in peace due to the strike and the smell of the piled up garbage keeping people away, using expired ear drops found in the trash with the side effect of losing the sense of smell to block out the stench.
As various holiday related cases come through Abby's court at Christmas time, one in particular grabs her interest, when a pushy vacuum salesman won't leave a customer alone, and after the lights briefly went out and came back on, the defendant disappears. A harried NYPD detective then explains that the salesman was actually an actor who performs at murder mystery parties, and got too deep into his role. Once the actor is found, Abby tries to convince him to go to jail with the detective by having the rest of the court staff play characters in the story he is stuck in (including Dan as a female southern belle). During the performance in the courthouse cafeteria, the lights go out again, and upon coming back on, the actor appears to be stabbed in the back with a dagger. A mortified Dan then reveals he set the whole thing up as a Christmas present for murder mystery enthusiast Abby, but he didn't expect it to get out of hand. Abby then reveals that she knew what Dan was planning, so she hired another actor to play the detective, and that the stabbing was fake. Once everybody left, the actors playing the defendant and the detective implied amongst themselves that they were actually angels sent from Heaven to spread Christmas cheer (which Flobert overhears and is freaked out by). Meanwhile, Gurgs takes offense when Wyatt places her coat over top of his brand new coat on the cafeteria coat rack to protect it from getting dirty/stolen.
On May 3, 2021, the series was given a pilot order by NBC,[51][52] and on September 24, 2021, was given a series order.[53] On February 2, 2023, NBC renewed the series for a second season.[2] On May 3, 2024, NBC renewed the series for an 18-episode third season.[6]
Casting
Larroquette was already attached to the series when it was announced on December 16, 2020.[50] Although Rauch was not originally expected to act in the show,[50] on April 30, 2021, it was reported that she would play the leading role of Judge Abby Stone, the daughter of the original series character Harry Stone.[54]
Villafañe left the series after shooting the original pilot. In March 2022, India de Beaufort was cast as Olivia, a prosecutor, in a "reimagining" of Villafañe's role, as a second pilot episode was then shot.[58] On December 28, 2023, it was announced that Kapil Talwalkar will not be returning for the second season.[10] On January 18, 2024, it was reported that Nyambi Nyambi was promoted to a series regular.[11]
On February 13, 2024, while talking to reporters, John Larroquette admitted feeling a little sad when he first walked on the set of the Night Court revival, due to being one of the only cast members from the original run still living. But as time went on, he started feeling better and credited co-star/executive producer Melissa Rauch for rejuvenating the franchise.[59] On May 21, 2024, it was announced that de Beaufort is not returning for the third season.[9] On July 10, 2024, Wendie Malick was promoted as a series regular for the third season.[12]
Night Court premiered on NBC on January 17, 2023.[1] The second season premiered on December 23, 2023.[3][4] The third season premiered on November 19, 2024.[7]
Home media
Night Court: The Complete First Season was released in Region 1 on October 17, 2023 by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.[60]
Reception
Critical response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 74% approval rating with an average rating of 6.5/10, based on 23 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "This revival retains enough of the original Night Court's spirit to ward off objections from fans while offering a somewhat stale sitcom format to newcomers, but it ought to sustain interest when judged alongside its own peers."[61]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 62 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[62]
William Hughes of The A.V. Club gave the series a B and said, "If you're curious about it, don't let the pilot throw you off, at least; check back in a few episodes later, once the show has actually hit its (often pretty funny) comedic stride."[63]
