It’s difficult to be a hit series nowadays, so CBS‘s 3-part show breaking all the rules to become TV’s most-watched project is more impressive. Network TV is currently dominated by sitcoms and procedurals, with the latter coming in various kinds — first-responder, legal, police, and medical. It seems like broadcasters haven’t run out of ways to make the tried and tested trope work after all these years. Still, there’s interest in doing something new and evolving the genre, with projects like Kathy Bates’ Matlock and even the cancelled-too-soon Found shaking things up.
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In the grand scheme of things, however, procedurals are still the king of network TV. Nearly all top-rated shows during the ongoing cycle fall in this category, such as long-runninng projects like NCIS, Chicago Med, and even the Yellowstone spinoff, Marshals. All of the aforementioned projects have solid ensembles, with broadcasters banking on the chemistry of its big cast to keep people invested when weekly cases don’t do the trick. One show defies this rule, however, and it pays off big time — Tracker.
Justin Hartley’s Tracker, which premiered in 2024, follows Colter Shaw as he helps families reunite with their missing loved ones while also making sense of his own dad’s death. The show lives and dies with him, as he’s on-the-ground on his own, usually paired up with locals to solve his weekly cases. Despite that, Tracker has been the most-watched show on TV. During its debut, following Super Bowl LVIII, it amassed a whopping 18.4 million. Aside from the expected dip, Tracker season 1 averaged 10.4 million viewers every week, while season 2 averaged 17.34 million.
Tracker Still Needs To Change Despite Its Success
For what it’s worth, Tracker does have supporting characters. Colter is helped by lawyer Reenie and all-around-guy Randy, but both of them usually provide support remotely. This means that they only appear briefly every week to share significant information to its titular character. Jensen Ackles’ Russell Shaw, Colter’s brother, shows up from time to time, but he’s never in more than two episodes per season. Ultimately, Hartlety remains its only series regular, without him, there’s no show. For the most part of its run, Tracker has maintained its place as the most-watched show on TV, and not has really come close to competing with it.
That said, it needs some major changes coming to Tracker season 4. Marshals has given it a run for its money, and with both shows returning during the 2026-2027 TV cycle, the Yellowstone-set series has more opportunities to fully dethrone Hartley’s series. Beyond that, it’s also just not sustainable for Tracker to just be about Colter. Filming network shows, which have more episodes and a guaranteed annual return, can easily be draining, especially for Hartley, who is also a producer for the series. If CBS wants Tracker to run for more years, it needs to diversify its storytelling.
With Tracker season 4 already confirmed, the network has enough time to make some changes to the series. The challenge now is to make sure that the series not only sustains its success next cycle, but also keep it running for more years to come.
Tracker airs on CBS every Sunday and is available to stream on Paramount+.
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