Colter Shaw travels the country in a black pickup truck, towing the R.V. that he calls home. He strides into strangers’ lives, looking at them with his earnest brown eyes and pledging he will help — for a fee. After all, the man has gas to pay for.
If you still watch network TV there’s a good chance you’ve met Colter. Played by Justin Hartley, he’s the center of “Tracker,” the CBS drama that premiered right after the Super Bowl in 2024 and quickly staked out a spot at the top of the ratings. In its second season, which ended in May, the only shows with more viewers were the Netflix megahits “Squid Game” and “Adolescence.” Season 3 premieres on Oct. 19.
“Tracker” is the most successful series in a mini-renaissance for the lone-wolf procedural, in which a gifted hero offers viewers the reliable pleasure of seeing a thorny problem resolved in under an hour. ABC’s “High Potential,” about a crime-solving genius played by Kaitlin Olson, and CBS’s revival of the legal drama “Matlock,” starring Kathy Bates, both debuted in fall 2024 and were among the 10 most-watched shows on TV last season. So was “Reacher,” on Amazon Prime Video, which has longer story arcs but also revolves around a tough-guy drifter, played by Alan Ritchson. Other popular examples include “Elsbeth” and “Watson,” both also with new seasons this fall on CBS, and “Will Trent,” slated to return in January on ABC.
“Tracker,” based on a series of novels by Jeffery Deaver, follows Colter throughout the country as he plies his trade as a “rewardist,” tracking down missing persons for families willing to pay. Aided remotely by his lawyer and love interest, Reenie (Fiona Rene), and various handlers, he rescues a boy from a wealth-seeking kidnapper, a tech whiz who has fallen prey to a dangerous cult and other people who could use the help of a man with his particular set of skills.
There is a bit of back story: Colter was raised by survivalists, and he has reason to believe his brother killed his father. But “Tracker” is a throwback kind of series, with very little in the way of intricate long-form storytelling, antihero angst or zeitgeist exploration.
For Elwood Reid, the showrunner, the series’s clarity goes a long way toward explaining its success. In an interview he broke it down like this: “Stranger enters town. ‘Tell me what happened.’ ‘My kid was at the bus stop. He went missing.’ ‘OK, I’m going to go find him.’
“I mean, it’s the simplest setup in the world.”
Hartley likens it to “The Rockford Files.” “Colter’s not the kind of guy that’s going to bring two or three people with him for a team effort,” he said in a phone interview as he drove up the Oregon coast to shoot Season 3 in Vancouver. (James Garner’s Jim Rockford also had his office in a camper).
Reid, who took over the series after the pilot was shot (by Ken Olin, an executive producer), points to two other old-school shows about wandering administers of justice: “Kung Fu,” which ran on ABC from 1972-75; and “The Incredible Hulk” (CBS, 1977-1982). Like “Tracker,” these series revolve around stoic men doomed to roam, living by a moral code and, when necessary, brute force. (Part of the fun in “Tracker” lies in waiting for the moment when this nice, helpful man beats the bad guys to a pulp).
Editors’ Picks
When Should You See a Doctor About Sleep?
‘Sex and Love Addiction’ Isn’t a Diagnosis, but It Can Be Debilitating
She Became an Elite Runner by Leaving Running Behind
Reid, who has also worked on “Cold Case,” “The Bridge” and “The Chi,” sees the simplicity of “Tracker,” and of Colter, as a big reason for the show’s success.
“There’s something immensely appealing about this very efficient guy who will do anything to get a result, and not in a jerky way, not in a dark way, but like an Eagle Scout,” Reid said. “You want him to show up at your door when your grandma goes missing. I think there’s some wish fulfillment there.”
Going further back in pop culture history, Reid mentions “Shane,” the story of an ex-gunfighter (Alan Ladd) protecting late 1800s homesteaders from unsavory characters; and Clint Eastwood, the prototypical mystery man of action. These precedents put “Tracker” in the tradition of the western, a genre that recently made room for another hit series that your parents probably watch more than you do, “Yellowstone,” and its many spinoffs (including a new one, “Y: Marshals,” which will share Sunday nights on CBS with “Tracker” next spring).
“Like any good Western, the show is situational,” Reid said, running through some imperatives common to the genre: “I’ve got to get across that river. There are hostile people over there. I’ve got to survive. I’ve got to provide.”
He continued: “There’s something very primal about that. I do think there are DNA elements of the western there.”
Reid also believes Hartley, best known for “This Is Us” and “Smallville,” has an Eastwood-like ability to “hold the camera,”But “Tracker” is a throwback kind of series, with very little in the way of intricate long-form storytelling, antihero angst or zeitgeist exploration.
For Elwood Reid, the showrunner, the series’s clarity goes a long way toward explaining its success. In an interview he broke it down like this: “Stranger enters town. ‘Tell me what happened.’ ‘My kid was at the bus stop. He went missing.’ ‘OK, I’m going to go find him.’
“I mean, it’s the simplest setup in the world.”
Hartley likens it to “The Rockford Files.” “Colter’s not the kind of guy that’s going to bring two or three people with him for a team effort,” he said in a phone interview as he drove up the Oregon coast to shoot Season 3 in Vancouver. (James Garner’s Jim Rockford also had his office in a camper).
Reid, who took over the series after the pilot was shot (by Ken Olin, an executive producer), points to two other old-school shows about wandering administers of justice: “Kung Fu,” which ran on ABC from 1972-75; and “The Incredible Hulk” (CBS, 1977-1982). Like “Tracker,” these series revolve around stoic men doomed to roam, living by a moral code and, when necessary, brute force. (Part of the fun in “Tracker” lies in waiting for the moment when this nice, helpful man beats the bad guys to a pulp).
Editors’ Picks
When Should You See a Doctor About Sleep?
‘Sex and Love Addiction’ Isn’t a Diagnosis, but It Can Be Debilitating
She Became an Elite Runner by Leaving Running Behind
Reid, who has also worked on “Cold Case,” “The Bridge” and “The Chi,” sees the simplicity of “Tracker,” and of Colter, as a big reason for the show’s success.
“There’s something immensely appealing about this very efficient guy who will do anything to get a result, and not in a jerky way, not in a dark way, but like an Eagle Scout,” Reid said. “You want him to show up at your door when your grandma goes missing. I think there’s some wish fulfillment there.”
Going further back in pop culture history, Reid mentions “Shane,” the story of an ex-gunfighter (Alan Ladd) protecting late 1800s homesteaders from unsavory characters; and Clint Eastwood, the prototypical mystery man of action. These precedents put “Tracker” in the tradition of the western, a genre that recently made room for another hit series that your parents probably watch more than you do, “Yellowstone,” and its many spinoffs (including a new one, “Y: Marshals,” which will share Sunday nights on CBS with “Tracker” next spring).
“Like any good Western, the show is situational,” Reid said, running through some imperatives common to the genre: “I’ve got to get across that river. There are hostile people over there. I’ve got to survive. I’ve got to provide.”
He continued: “There’s something very primal about that. I do think there are DNA elements of the western there.”
Reid also believes Hartley, best known for “This Is Us” and “Smallville,” has an Eastwood-like ability to “hold the camera,” a physicality that doesn’t need words. Colter talks more than the typical Clint character, but he speaks in a clipped, declarative manner. He likes to break down situations, including chances of survival, with impromptu statistical analysis, although Hartley thinks the character finds comfort in the numbers rather than actually believing them.
“Let’s be honest, he just sort of just makes it up,” he said. “There’s no real way to say what percentage of yada, yada, yada could be whatever, whatever.”
Like most TV lone wolves, Colter has a supporting cast of quirky friends — hackers, fixers, handlers — helping him out. His team has evolved throughout the show’s run, with popular characters played by Robin Weigert, Abby McEnany and Eric Graise being written out and Chris Lee, a recurring guest star, set to play a larger role in Season 3.
“We aren’t ‘replacing’ characters,” Reid said. “Colter has many relationships from his unusual career, and we will see them work together in different ways.”
Hartley doesn’t see “Tracker” as simple so much as grounded, following a path and character arc familiar to fans of procedurals. “I think there’s consistency with where his heart is and what he cares about,” he said. “He cares about people. He’s a really good listener. He’s smart. He’s not a superhero. He’s mortal like the rest of us. I think that’s what people really relate to.”
As Hartley’s cellphone reception came and went amid the mountains of Oregon, he joked: “We should do a ‘Tracker’ episode where they call to have me find somebody and just can’t get ahold of me, and I can have the entire week off. It’ll be great.” (Fortunately, his cell signal remained robust).
Although “Tracker” is shot in Vancouver — a city whose versatility (and relative affordability) has made it a filming hub for decades — the action is set wherever the road takes Colter. And it takes him all over, as suggested by the names of early episodes like “Missoula,” “Mt. Shasta,” “St. Louis,” “Lexington,” “Chicago.” (The series abandoned this titling convention late in Season 1.)
Hartley sees this range of locales and peoples as key to the show’s success.
“It’s this cross section of America, from California all the way over to New York and everything in between,” he said. “I don’t think there are many shows like that where we see people from all over the country.”
And people from all over the country are tuning in. In Season 2 “Tracker” fans were pretty evenly distributed across America, suggesting the breadth of its appeal — the largest portion of the audience was in the southeast (21 percent), closely followed by the northeast (20 percent) and west central (18 percent) regions, according to Nielsen.
Like Colter, “Tracker” gets around, one case at a time.
