![]() While cases come to Holmes via his front door in the original story and the BBC version, Elementary leans far more heavily on the character’s role as a police consultant. Instead of playing Conan Doyle’s esoteric game, if you like, Elementary borrows its playing pieces for use on a more familiar, generic board. While Sherlock is (literally) riddled with nods to Conan Doyle’s stories, each feature-length episode built from fluid layers of reference, updated versions and knowing in-jokes, Elementary takes static elements from the Holmes back catalogue (character names, the violin, bee-keeping, drug-use, the art of deduction) around which to wrap its detective show. Moffat and Gatiss’ episodes are closer to the Basil Rathbone feature films than a television serial, while Robert Doherty’s Elementary is more akin to procedural series House, Bones or Castle than its British predecessor. Take the format to begin with: three ninety-minute films (the BBC’s Sherlock) are a very different beast to twenty-four forty-minute episodes ( Elementary). Surface characteristics aside (the modern setting, the English lead, his scarf), the two are further apart than you might think. How does it compare to the BBC Sherlock? Unfavourably perhaps, but then so do most things. By the time the mid-season finale arrived, the two were almost neck and neck. ![]() In its initial run, what Elementary consistently offered up was just under an hour of Jonny Lee Miller being brilliantly watchable in a show that couldn’t quite keep up with him. The cases may have been the weaker link next to the performances, but the writing was good, the cast was strong, and the concept worked. Week two was a steady piece of work, and when number three rolled around – an episode written by House’s Peter Blake -, it had become not just tolerable, but enjoyable, and a reliably entertaining watch. To begin with admittedly, there wasn’t a great deal to justify the use of the Holmes estate, but what CBS delivered certainly wasn’t sacrilege.Ĭrucially, Elementary continued not to suck. It wasn’t the dumbed-down humourless travesty predicted by many, but a nicely diverting forty-odd minutes of TV. The pilot reviews ( ours included) were mostly full of pleasant surprise. The very slightly longer answer as to how Elementary silenced its critics is that it didn’t suck. Den of Geek and its ilk spoil us for the real world. At any given time, plenty of people are getting on with their lives and planning to watch a bit of telly after work, not reading multiple reviews of the same thing and getting stuck in with the online debates. Just as our Twitter feeds provide a warped porthole onto the outside world, magnifying a niche event until it feels as if everyone (not just that every one of the few hundred people we’ve chosen to listen to) is talking about it, so do sites like this. The short and annoying answer is that it didn’t. What then, happened? How did the least popular TV idea since Don’t Scare the Hare win over its critics? To the chagrin of these modern-day Sybils, Elementary not only received a full season order, and an additional two episodes on top of that, but it’s also considered a cert for second season renewal in May by those in the know. It was soon agreed that the new show would be cancelled in its first season, and thereafter destined to lurk alongside men’s leggings and Will.i.am in the grotty silo of ‘ideas that should never have seen the light of day’. The loudest anti- Elementary complaints took on a prophetic bent. CBS couldn’t have got the collective backs of the online community up faster than if they’d taken out a full page ad in the New York Times insisting Greedo shot first. We stopped spitting teeth over what Elementary had in common with Sherlock, and began denouncing its lead character for being Holmes in name only.Įnduring criticism (before anyone’s seen a single scene, remember) for being both a carbon copy of an existing version and so far removed from the source material it doesn’t count as an adaptation is quite the achievement when you think about it. ![]() Not only would the new Holmes live in New York City, but he would be a recovering smack addict with a girl for his Watson. At the time, they made great assurances about their integrity, so we have to assume that their modernised Sherlock Holmes doesn’t resemble ours in any way, as that would be extremely worrying.”Ī promise that CBS’ finished product would be checked carefully for signs of copyright infringement followed, and fans of Sherlock (we retiring, taciturn few) were left to do the rest. “It’s interesting, as they approached us a while back about remaking our show. Sherlock producer Sue Vertue called the CBS announcement “interesting” (a word rivalled only by ‘fine’ in the bland-surface-masking-boiling-torrent-of-inexpressible-rage stakes).
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