CBS Orders Einstein Series Pilot

CBS has ordered a pilot based on Einstein, a German procedural series based on the story of Albert Einstein’s brilliant but directionless great-grandson. The pilot, which represents the network’s third attempt to adapt Einstein, will be helmed by Andy Breckman and Randy Zisk, the team behind USA Network’s beloved detective series Monk. Einstein is the third pilot announced in relatively short order from CBS, following DMV and Eternally Yours. 

The Monk team is back in their standard operating procedure, with both Breckman and Zisk executive producing from a screenplay by Breckman, with Zisk directing the pilot. Deadline, who first reported the series, compares the series to both Monk and CBS’s Numbers.

Per the synopsis given at Deadline, “brilliant but directionless, the great grandson of Albert Einstein spends his days as a comfortably tenured professor until his bad boy antics land him in trouble with the law and he is pressed into service helping a local police detective solve her most puzzling cases.”

Other executive producers on the project include Intrigue’s Tariq Jalil; Rose Hughes, Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia, and Laura Beetz for Seven One Studios International. Jalil has been a key part in bringing the series to the American market, with a number of different creative teams taking a swing since 2018. This is Breckman and Zisk’s second attempt.

The original series , written by Martin Ritzenhoff and Matthias Dinter, ran on Sat.1 for three seasons. It starred Tom Beck and Annika Ernst, and was based on a movie originally written by Ritzenhoff and Dinter.

Breckman and Zisk recently returned to the world of quirky mysteries with Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie, which has been nominated for two Critics Choice Awards. In the movie, Monk is forced out of retirement when someone close to him is killed on the weekend of his adopted daughter’s wedding. With the rest of Monk’s old team already back in town for the wedding, they slip into old habits and work together to solve the case. 

Both Mr. Monk’s Last Case and the Monk series itself are now streaming on Peacock. As far as we can tell, there is no way to stream Einstein in the U.S.