Sherlock lives in a messy Brooklyn Heights apartment. (CBS)
Basil Rathbone and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may be turning over in their graves.
Rathbone, who first played Sherlock Holmes in the movies, and Doyle, who created the character, would surely be aghast — not that Holmes has found yet another incarnation, in Jonny Lee Miller on the new CBS series “Elementary.” What would make them take umbrage is that Watson has been turned into a woman.
This is the show’s set up: Sherlock comes to present-day New York as a consultant for the NYPD, after a stint in London rehab, and meets a “sober companion” paid by his father to look after him. Her name? Joan Watson, a former surgeon played by Lucy Liu of “Ally McBeal” fame.
Purists may groan, but Miller would like the outrage kept to a minimum. “Look at Robin Hood. There’s room for various interpretations,” he says. He plays Sherlock with a mischievous wit that raises this series several levels above the average CBS procedural. “You think twice about taking on an iconic character. But the pilot script was excellent.”
The first audiences who saw “Elementary,” this summer at Comic-Con, were enraptured. “The room was packed. Like 4,000 people,” says Liu. “It was very exciting. I was scanning the crowd and it was a diverse group.”
Coming on after “Person of Interest,” “Elementary” could not be better positioned to be the first fall show to break out of the pack. Yet Miller is not getting ahead of himself, even though he has moved to New York with his wife, actress Michele Hicks, and their son, Buster, to shoot the series.
“I’ve been on lots of shows I’ve thought things about,” he says, referring to “Eli Stone,” his last series to fall by the wayside. “I concentrate on doing my job. It’s a difficult business. There are other forces at play. It’s not up to me. It’s up to the network.”
Miller, 39, has intimate ties with the other actors cast in recent Sherlock films. He’s best friends with Jude Law, who has played Watson in the two Hollywood Sherlock movies that starred Robert Downey Jr. He’s also close friends with Benedict Cumberbatch, the PBS Sherlock with whom he shared an Olivier Best Actor award this year when they both starred in Danny Boyle’s stage production of “Frankenstein.”
One of the reasons Miller signed to do “Elementary” was that its approach was so different from the British Sherlock miniseries.
“I’m a huge fan of that show. I’ve worked with Benedict on stage very, very closely. I would call him up and talk to him about [his Sherlock] as soon as it came on,” he says. “Ours is very different. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been interested. It would have been too strange. If I could make my Sherlock half as interesting as his, I’ll be happy.’
Shooting the show in New York, four days on location, four days at Silvercup East studio in Long Island City, lets “Elementary” use the city as a character. “New York has some parallels with Victorian London in terms of its electricity and density, if you like, and edginess,” Miller says. “It’s really perfect. But wildly different at the same time. I love that you can see the Chrysler building in the shots. We use the real names of the neighborhoods. Some shows shy away from that.”
Today, “Elementary” is on location in the Meatpacking District, at an upscale restaurant on Gansevoort Street called Villa Pacri. It’s a balmy August morning, though you couldn’t tell by looking at the extras who are dressed for fall in tweed sportscoats and jackets.
The street-level café is the setting for a date scene with Watson and a male guest star with Mark Ruffalo-style scruff on his chin. Later, in the upstairs dining room, Watson and Sherlock meet with a sleazy guy who arranges liaisons for Wall Street executives.
Tourists traipse up and down Gansevoort. A dogged paparazzi stakes out his territory between a parked van and a flat holding lighting screens. A police car from the movie and TV division of the NYPD is parked at the end of the street in case the onlookers act up. Best of all, a blonde fashionista in five-inch heels teeters on the Belgian blocks in search of her next designer outfit.
Director Rosemary Rodriguez, who has helmed several episodes of “The Good Wife,” kisses Liu when the take goes particularly well. “That was f- – – ing awesome,” she says. “Charming and real.”
Naturally, a half-dozen takes are necessary to capture the moment when Sherlock texts Watson in the middle of her “ambush date,” set up by Watson’s female friend.
Liu, 43, walks with an open umbrella in the sunlight and takes time to talk about “Elementary” indoors on a beige couch in the rustic Italian restaurant. She reveals that, like Miller, she did not grow up reading the Doyle novels (she was a Judy Blume girl as a kid in Jackson Heights), making the burden of interpretation much lighter.
“I think that in some ways, my ignorance is bliss. If [Sherlock] was something that I knew and it was in my mind, set that way, my whole life, it would be harder to play it,” she says.
But Miller did get some of the Sherlock books and says that the novel that most resonated with him was “A Study in Scarlet.” It floored him when the setting moved from London to the US.
“I was amazed that it flashed back to Utah to see who the main criminal is,” Miller says. “All of a sudden you’re in Utah. He really colors these characters.”
Well, Doyle can take comfort that at least Miller is reading his work, and that may make the scrutiny that “Elementary” will certainly face easier to bear.
“When you have all that material, you think, ‘What will I find new for myself?’ ” Miller asks.
Liu thinks Miller has already found it. “It’s a star role. I’m excited for him,” she says.
ELEMENTARY
Thursday, 10 p.m., CBS