An Element of Surprise

I couldn't help my curiosity over last night's premiere of the new TV series Elementary. The BBC's Sherlock series is so incredibly brilliant that the mere idea that someone else would also try to do a modernized take on Sherlock Holmes seemed somewhere between foolish and insane. But what then seemed truly insane was that many critics who sampled the first episode reported that Elementary was actually one of the stronger pilots of the new TV season.

I will say right up front that comparing Elementary to Sherlock does indeed leave Elementary lagging far behind. But that said, I actually found it not all that difficult to set aside the desire to make that comparison. Sherlock comes across like an ongoing series of feature films, because of both the 90-minute format and the sky-high production values. The pilot episode of Elementary, on the other hand, felt very much like the kickoff to a procedural crime show. Taken on that level, I found myself comparing it not to Sherlock, but to other crime shows -- particularly other CBS shows like the incarnations of CSI.

In that comparison, Elementary is exceptional. The mystery of the hour was more intriguing. The methodology of solving it -- the observations and deductions of Holmes versus the lab montages -- was far more compelling. And the focus on character was far greater. The back stories of Holmes and Watson were both well developed, as was the relationship between them.

Of course, you can't talk about that relationship without noting the significant change made here by series creator Rob Doherty -- he changed John Watson into a woman, Joan Watson. Fortunately, this seems to have been done with no intent of doing the typical "will they be a couple?" tension typical of most TV series; the script in fact sets up and mocks this very notion in an early scene. Instead, the change to Watson seems to be most useful in altering how that character will interact with the rest of each story; having a woman in the mix will provide a vehicle for different observations, different communications with clients and suspects, a helpfully different sensibility.

When it comes to evaluating the performances of the lead actors, Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, it does become impossible not to want to stack them side by side with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. Those two men are doing such brilliant work on the BBC show that I simply accept them as the real Holmes and Watson, almost as though the 19th century version imagined by Arthur Conan Doyle had never existed first. That said, Miller and Liu do seem to be establishing an interesting rapport right from the get-go in this first episode. And again, the work is far and away better than that on any other CBS crime procedural.

So the bottom line is, I really did like Elementary. It's good in a different way, sufficiently different from the BBC's Sherlock that maybe it will become a regular show for me. We'll see.

Not that I won't be chomping at the bit when series 3 of Sherlock finally arrives.