SHERIFF COUNTRY – Season 1 Key Art | ©2026 CBS

FIRE COUNTRY, now in its fourth season on CBS, renewed for a fifth, with all episodes streaming on Paramount Plus, is created by actor Max Thieriot & his fellow executive producers Tony Phelan & Joan Rater.

In FIRE COUNTRY, Thieriot stars as Bode Leone, who goes from a volunteer firefighter as part of a prisoner work program in his small (fictional) rural town of Edgewater to a full-fledged member of the fire department upon his release.

FIRE COUNTRY’s spin-off, SHERIFF COUNTRY, also created by Thieriot & Phelan & Rater, is one of CBS’s big hits of the 2025-2026 season. Renewed for its second season early in its first year, now on CBS on Friday nights, with episodes thereafter streaming on Paramount Plus, SHERIFF COUNTRY revolves around Edgewater’s new sheriff Mickey Fox, played by Morena Baccarin.

Mickey was first introduced on FIRE COUNTRY as the stepsister of Bode’s mom/Cal Fire division chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr).

On SHERIFF COUNTRY, we meet Mickey’s teen daughter Skye (Amanda Arcuri) and Mickey’s dad Wes, played by W. Earl Brown, who complicates Mickey’s life by being an unlicensed local marijuana grower and general scofflaw.

Mickey’s ex-husband and Skye’s father, lawyer Travis Fraley, played by Christopher Gorham, is still in the picture. There is something of a triangle between Mickey, Travis, and Mickey’s second-in-command Nathan Boone, played by Matt Lauria. Travis’s ex-girlfriend Cassidy Campbell, played by Michele Weaver, is now a sheriff’s deputy.

CBS holds two SHERIFF COUNTRY panels, one as part of a network day, and the second as part of a virtual event hosted by the Television Critics Association (TCA) that also includes FIRE COUNTRY. This article combines quotes from both. The panelists include actors Baccarin, Lauria, Brown, Weaver, Gorham, plus creators/EPs Thieriot, Phelan and Rater, and SHERIFF COUNTRY showrunner/SHERIFF COUNTRY/FIRE COUNTRY exec producer Matt Lopez.

Thieriot starts by explaining how it all began. “What inspired me to create FIRE COUNTRY was this opportunity to tell a story rooted in the community I grew up in, and to shine a light on the real-life heroes who put everything on the line to protect their neighbors. From the beginning, the show has always been about more than just the action. It’s about resilience, redemption, the human spirit, and getting to see how audiences have connected with these characters, and now watching the world of FIRE COUNTRY [expand with SHERIFF COUNTRY] has been pretty dang exciting for me.”

Morena Baccarin as Sheriff Mickey Fox in SHERIFF COUNTRY – Season 1 – “The Finest” | ©2026 CBS/Sergei Bachlakov

How do Thieriot and his fellow creators feel about bringing a new scripted network show into an increasingly unscripted landscape?

“I don’t know,” Thieriot replies. “In my eyes, the goal is always to create the best television show, the most compelling characters, right? All we can really do is focus on what’s right in front of us and try and do the best that we can with what we have. I don’t really get concerned about it. I think that if the product is great, I think people will find it, and I think this show is really that. Joan, what do you think?”

“I agree with you,” Rater answers. “If I started thinking [about where SHERIFF COUNTRY fits in the TV landscape], I’d go crazy. It does push us, because we know every episode has to be good, we have to be really clear with the story we’re telling, and we have to like it. If we like it, I bet other people are going to like it. That’s all we can do, right, guys?”

Lopez concurs. “I think that’s right. Obviously, it’s a fractured media landscape, but I’m very encouraged. I have two teenaged daughters, and I think viewers, no matter what age and no matter what else they might be tuning into, want, crave and find their way to great storytelling.

“My nineteen-year-old is obsessed with THE GOOD WIFE. It hasn’t been on in years, but she and her friends recently discovered it. I think audiences hopefully will find great stories. I certainly think they want to hear great stories, like the ones we’re telling on our show. “

Phelan adds, “And one of the exciting things that we found out with FIRE COUNTRY is that audiences are discovering it on Paramount Plus, and then that’s drawing them back to the network. So, I think that people find shows in a variety of ways. One of the great things about being on CBS is our relationship with Paramount Plus, and CBS has been nothing but supportive of us taking really big swings in terms of the storytelling. And if there’s one thing that streaming has done, it has forced network TV to invest in exciting stories and storytellers, and to push the boundaries.”

What elements of FIRE COUNTRY did the producers want to bring onto SHERIFF COUNTRY?

“I think family, the community, the small town, grounding it in this place where everybody sort of knows everyone, and everything is that much more personal, makes it that much more relatable,” says Thieriot. “That’s one of the big core elements, that both shows take place in Edgewater, so it’s really about building out this community and having a better sense of one side of the town, and then the other side of the town, and the other things that go on.”

Phelan feels, “That’s hopefully one of the things that makes this a different kind of police procedural, is that you’re dealing with people who you know when you roll up on a lot of situations. That doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t as high, but it does, I think, affect how you police. This also gives us an opportunity to show more of Edgewater and who lives there, and the kinds of things that they’re dealing with and grappling with.”

Did the creators already know they wanted to do a FIRE COUNTRY spin-off and then settle on centering it on Baccarin’s Mickey character, or did the Mickey character pop so much that they decided on doing a spin-off based on that?

Rater responds, “We wanted to do a spin-off, and we were like, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could get Morena Baccarin in. But no, the spin-off idea came because we wanted to expand the universe, and then Tony, Max, and I thought of this character, and then we hoodwinked Morena into playing it.”

Did Baccarin feel any extra pressure playing Mickey on FIRE COUNTRY, knowing there might be a spin-off?

“No,” Baccarin jokes, then gets real. “Yeah, it was a lot of pressure. I mean, it was a bit harrowing when people kept saying to me, ‘This might be a spin-off, but it just depends on whether or not they like you. So, just do your best and hopefully you’ll get your own show.’ I got pitched the character and the general idea of the pilot by Tony and Joan, and immediately, utterly fell in love with this part and the potential of it. So, it really was like a dangling carrot.” She suggests that if producers want an actor “to do a really good job on something, tell them they have the potential to have their own show.”

Baccarin observes that Thieriot was there for her during her FIRE COUNTRY appearances, as were the other regular cast members. “Everybody was incredibly warm and welcoming and genuinely excited about the potential of growing the Edgewater universe. I realized, I’m guest-starring on someone’s show, but as my own character, and having to create this character very last minute, without any police training in a show that was about firefighters. And so, it wasn’t until we got here and started training that I really realized what I was doing and how I was getting my bearings and creating this character. You can see the building of the character through FIRE COUNTRY. It was like, you start the sketch of the painting, and it wasn’t until I got here that the paint went on the canvas.”

Rater adds, “I could add than then we did another episode, building out the universe, because we as the writers had realized that her father was really central to her story. [We fell] in love with Earl Brown, and so we brought him in to show the FIRE COUNTRY audience this weed grower inside of Edgewater who is so prominent in our SHERIFF COUNTRY story.”

Baccarin says that, for Mickey, SHERIFF COUNTRY begins with “a bit of immediate growth on her part. We saw on FIRE COUNTRY how she had to forgive Sharon, and it continues in SHERIFF COUNTRY. We get to see the extension of the family with the dad and some version of, if not forgiveness, cohabiting. And I think for fans of FIRE COUNTRY, it’s exciting to see the family grow and to see how Mickey is so frustrated with her family.”

“We will bring in some characters that are going to continue to challenge Mickey and Sharon’s relationship,” Rater elaborates. “[On FIRE COUNTRY], Sharon has always been that person who is always having the whole family over. It’s an open-door policy. She’s the mama bear, the hostess. And one of our images for SHERIFF COUNTRY is Mickey wants that in her life. She has a much more broken family.

“At the beginning of the season, she has a complicated relationship with her father, played by Earl, who is a criminal, and she has a complex relationship with her daughter, but an image we always had in the writers room was, at the end of the season, what Mickey wants is her family around the dinner table, and it’s a challenge to get them there.”

What are some of the other relationships on SHERIFF COUNTRY like?

Gorham offers, “One of my favorite things about the beginning of this first season is learning more about Travis and Mickey’s relationship, and what happened with them, because when we meet them, they’ve been divorced for about five years, and they’re doing their best to co-parent their daughter.”

“She’s doing her best,” Baccarin contributes, suggesting that maybe Mickey thinks Travis has not done his best.

“We had some very mixed results,” Gorham continues. “And so, it makes for great drama … and man, we get some good fights. Not just fireworks fights, but based in something that feels very real and genuine for two people who’ve loved each other since they were seventeen years old. All of that going on, with everything else that Mickey has to deal with – I think Travis gives her a place where you see a side of Mickey that she can’t ever show at work.”

Baccarin picks up on this. “I think that what Chris is saying about not being able to show is very much how Mickey lives. She’s most comfortable in her office, where she knows that she’s competent, and she knows how to handle the situations and solve the problems. The show is a lot about taking somebody who is very black and white and putting them in really awkward and gray situations, and it makes for combustion.

“She’s got this relationship with her daughter that’s incredibly complicated. Her father is literally growing illegal weed, and she’s a sheriff, and she’s got her ex-husband who is doing some things that she does not agree with, and it’s all a very high-pressure situation. Then enter Boone, and how they handle their work stuff is completely different. It all makes for really fun watching.”

Weaver contributes, “I’ll say as well the thing that I love about these series is that life is messy, and they show that, but the writers also do such a good job of making these characters human, and you get to know these humans, the good and the bad, and the messiness of them, and so I am excited for people to see where they take all of these relationships, the ones in the office, the ones that overflow outside of the job. It’s been really fun as an actor.”

Lauria takes on his character’s point of view to tease Gorham. “The most significant thing, probably, to highlight from all this is that Travis is really the ex-husband. That’s the past, and the past is important, and we bring some of the past. I feel there’s not really quite the same type of support system that she can get with a [work] partner, with someone who you’ve been with twenty-four/seven, day in, day out, in your car every day for a couple of years.

Gorham playfully advocates for Travis’s perspective. “Matt, that’s a really good point, and I think it’s also important to remember when you have a partnership like that, how important honesty is, right? So, I think it’s great how Boone has no secrets [from] Mickey. It’s really aspirational.”

More seriously, Lauria notes, “There’s so much substance to their relationship that is born of miles traveled, hours and hours and days and months and years, side by side, locked in a car together, just getting into all of it. There’s a rapport, there is a trust. The writers have presented this misunderstanding in that very first episode alone. We’re so close to understanding one another’s perspectives, but it’s this very fine line of divergence there that creates so much fodder for misunderstanding, or the need to continue to come to the table and understand each other in a different way, but it’s a really fun thing that gets kicked off in the first episode, and that we get to see play out over time.”

How does Thieriot balance his schedule between FIRE COUNTRY and SHERIFF COUNTRY?

Baccarin quips, “I think Max and I are going to start a little SLEEP COUNTRY pretty soon.”

Thieriot deadpans, “We’ve been talking about VACATION COUNTRY for a while. WINE COUNTRY.”

“WINE COUNTRY?” Baccarin muses. “I’m in.”

“WINE COUNTRY, yeah, that’s the off season,” Thieriot resumes. “No, I’m very committed to SHERIFF COUNTRY and obviously, with Bode, we’ve been doing some crossovers. We’ve had a couple small ones and this big, exciting, awesome crossover [FIRE COUNTRY’s Season 4, Episode 13 “The Bravest” and SHERIFF COUNTRY’s Season 1, Episode 13 “The Finest”]. Obviously, it was a huge amount of work for all the actors and the crew to pull off. I think the harder thing is just finding time to be able to bring actors into each other’s shows and into that part of Edgewater.

“But aside from that, [for SHERIFF COUNTRY], I watch cuts, I get dailies every day, I give notes on everything – I won’t lie, it ends up being a heck of a lot. That’s probably why my voice sounds the way it does right now. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. And honestly, we have such a great team over there, and clearly it starts at the top. And Morena is an incredible leader and just an amazing partner on screen for all of her costars, and I know the crew adores her. And so, I think it really starts there. People will bust their ass for you if you show them that you’re going to bust your ass, and you’re going to be there every day, and you care about them.

“A big thing that I’ve always said from the beginning is, people want to work and go home and be able to smile at the end of the day. And if you can do that, it just changes the whole tone and the work ethic. Our writers’ room is incredible. Matt Lopez, our showrunner, is a complete stud and has come up with some really exciting stories throughout this season. I wish I could say that I had to do more, but honestly, it’s been so smooth that there’s not a ton to have to do.”

The two-parter, “Crucible,” that spanned last year’s SHERIFF COUNTRY winter finale and midseason premiere had an uncommon amount of action.

“It took a lot of prep,” Baccarin relates. “The initial prep in the beginning of the season to figure out all of our guns and things, and then, this episode, we had to brush up, because there were so many things I learned about other weapons – shotguns and flash grenades and whatnot. So, that was one component to it.

“And it was a very carefully choreographed staged area. We had to make sure that, with every stunt and everything that we were doing, we were progressing the story, because we had to tell a very consistent story of being under siege, running out of ammo, and having no radio connectivity to the outside world.

“So, it was really about pinpointing those moments physically in action and the emotional layering in of, at what point is the breaking point? At one point, I’m overwhelmed and Boone steps up and is there for me, and vice-versa. We flip-flop. And then the dangers that happen – we see that Travis gets shot, and the emotional component that comes with that. So, I had to be very specific about the emotional beats and moments, and also physically knowing, ‘Okay, this is the section where I have two shells left in my shotgun. Am I going to use it for this guy or that guy, and how am I going to get backup?’”

The demands of the episode were so time-and-labor-intensive, Baccarin continues, that some of it required “block shooting.” This is the term for when a production shoots sections of every scene using the same set and camera set-up, no matter how far apart these sequences are in the narrative, before moving on to the sections that will be covered in the next set-up.

“So, we shot the first part and the second part of that episode together. Flip-flopping back and forth between those actions was really difficult. But the section where we’re under siege and all the gunfire is happening, they managed to shoot in chronological order, so we could really break ourselves down physically in the space around us, and then play everything after that point.

“We were, I think, five days in the sheriff’s office, hunkered down behind desks in one spot, in one position. My knees really took a beating on those five days.”

Baccarin wants everyone to know, “I’m extremely excited for people to see this show. It’s got just the right amount of action and fun, with the best mix of emotional integrity and depth, and the good parts of a soap mixed in with a thriller, and watching these characters figure things out together, and such an amazing cast and group of people. I’m beyond thrilled.”

Phelan elaborates, “I’ll just add that, when a cast like this comes together, and everybody is on the same page, and everybody is really committed to telling these stories, it’s a real gift. And to have somebody like Morena as Number One on the call sheet and a leader of the show has been fantastic.”

Baccarin believes core the appeal of both SHERIFF COUNTRY and FIRE COUNTRY is “family. It originates with that. The excitement of solving the crime, of putting out the fire, of dealing with whatever we’re dealing with, and strong emotional arcs, and people’s connectivity to each other. We’re all relating to each other as a family.”

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