EXPRESS TRAIN: Lucy Liu stars as Watson and Jonny Lee Miller (right) is Sherlock in the CBS Holmes reboot, “Elementary,” set in NYC. (
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If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were creating Sherlock Holmes for TV today, chances are very good that he’d be a lot like the Sherlock that CBS has created in their new procedural, “Elementary.”
In fact, the “real” Holmes loved cocaine, was a not-nice, anti-social guy who disdained everyone, had a messy flat and a spotless brain.
His sidekick, Dr. Watson, was not just his tag-along, but his handler. Since there were no movie stars in need of handlers in the 19th century, he was thought of as a right-hand, messenger, decoy, look-out, straight man,and foil. He was also what we now call a “sober companion,” since Holmes was a cocaine user and Dr. Watson didn’t approve.
Holmes wouldn’t have lived in NYC, had tattoos nor a female handler, but he also wouldn’t have had a cellphone or computer.
On the quite good, new series, which takes place in current day NYC, Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) is a not-nice, reluctantly recovering substance abuser, who has a spotless brain and a messy apartment. He does have a Dr. Watson handler/sober companion. And, oh yes, he is a she played by Lucy Liu.
This modern update, especially coming on the heels of the breathtakingly good English series, “Sherlock” (“Masterpiece Mystery,” PBS), starring Miller’s English stage rival, Benedict Cumberbatch, has all the elements of disaster. (Modern, female, NYC — yikes!)
You don’t have to be a detective to have figured that out. But even detectives can be wrong.
“Elementary” actually works on many levels, not the least of which is his reason for being in NYC: His father sent him to rehab but he said, “No, no, no.”
That’s where Liu comes in. Her Watson is a surgeon who lost a patient and her license a few years earlier.
Watson is solid and moral but guilt-riddled and thus has taken up addiction counseling, while Holmes hangs with hookers and loves heroin. She’s been hired by Holmes’ father to keep him clean.
He, of course, wants no part of her, although he does find her somewhat useful when she figures out that the marks around a woman’s neck could not have been made by the suspect because they are the wrong size and from the wrong angle. Only a physician could know that.
Unlike the British series, which uses actual Doyle plots, these procedurals are all newly minted.
Hopefully, “Elementary” won’t turn into “Moonlighting,” but so far there is no sexual tension between them, and no clues that it’s heading that way. Good. They are buddy — not bedding — PIs.