Will fans of 'The Good Wife' pay for a 'Fight'?

The Good Fight is trying to make a case for viewers to pay.

The spinoff of The Good Wife for CBS All Access stars Wife alums Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo, and is told from the perspective from recent law-school grad Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie). Set a year after Wife ended, the series follows high-profile Chicago attorney Diane Lockhart (Baranski) as she and goddaughter Maia are tainted by a Madoff-style financial scandal.

But will Fight lure an audience willing to pay to watch? The premiere aired Sunday on CBS, but subsequent episodes are available each Sunday only on All Access ($5.99 a month).

Glenn Hower, analyst at Parks Associates, says Wife's fans might help attract subscribers. "CBS, by piggybacking off an established brand, (has) access to a built-in audience."

CBS is trying to give viewers a "must-have reason to subscribe to an over-the-top (Internet) service," says Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG.   "The question is: Are they creating enough content to keep people there? Because once you go to the Good Fight, do you stay after 10 or 12 weeks?"  A new Star Trek series is due later this year, but the service, which now counts more than 1 million subscribers, mostly offers CBS reruns, in contrast to Hulu, owned by CBS rivals, which offers a broader array of content.

Creators Robert and Michelle King say producing a digital series is less stressful. The 10-episode season is less than half as long as The Good Wife's, and "the pressure for ratings was really hard those first two years, because we were not one of the best-rated CBS shows," Robert says. "Here, we're not looking anxiously on Monday morning to see what the ratings are." "

Review: Catch CBS' 'The Good Fight' while you can

The Kings knew that "people were hungry for all the subsidiary characters" from Wife, Robert says. Their hope is that fans "would be drawn back to that kind of circus" with returning guest stars such as kooky lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) and quirky-but-strict Judge Abernathy (Denis O'Hare). Other returning guests include Gary Cole, Matthew Perry, Frankie Faison and Jane Alexander.

Returning as liberal-leaning Diane was a no-brainer for Baranski. "I would get to play a character that I have played for seven years, who I thought was something of a role model and kind of a groundbreaking character in television because we don't see the Diane Lockharts represented, and there are Diane Lockharts out in the world running companies, institutions and governments."

Plus, the schedule was appealing. "I can do a play this summer if I want. I can travel," Baranski says. And without network censors,  "there would be more artistic license," as the new series includes both profanity and glimpses of nudity.   "If you actually are alone in a room and found out you've lost all your money, you might resort to that four-letter word," she says, referring to a scene in the premiere where Diane learns she's lost her life savings.

"Suddenly the characters are able to talk the way they always talked in our head," says Michelle King. "It's just more realistic."

The changes come in waves.  After her request to undo her planned retirement is rejected by her firm, she finds refuge in an African-American practice, where she's reunited with Wife's Lucca Quinn (Jumbo) and Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele), another Wife regular.But Diane is "very much in the minority," Baranski says. "The landscape of The Good Fight suddenly becomes literally and figuratively, different — transformational."