Elementary, my dear Watson

Like quite a few people, I was rather apprehensive to watchthe American adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Thereason? All the promotional posters and press releases made Elementary appearan awful lot like the BBC’s adaptation ‘Sherlock’.  To the people, like me, who put ‘Elementary’down before even watching it or even reading up about it, then that may be correct. But in actual fact theyboth have their differences and their similarities.

‘Elementary’ from American station CBS, features Jonny LeeMiller (Train spotting) as the infamous Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu (Kill Bill:Vol 1) as Dr Joan Watson. There was quite an uproar over the fact John Watson is now a woman, however many fans have been eager to see this happen on the offchance that the relationship between Watson and Holmes can be explored on a newlevel, that is made very obvious in some adaptations. The decision to change John into Joan, was defended by the writers as ".. Holmes struggles a bit with women... What could be more trying for Sherlock Holmes than working with Watson as a woman?" Whilst set in New YorkCity, Holmes remains very English, which is a factor that would be a shame tosee go. 

The one mistake you could make when comparing the two, is to say they are one and the same. Of course, both adaptations are set during the modern age so it is very easy to make assumptions. However, the thing that Elementary keeps in the spotlight that Sherlock does not is Holmes’ drug addiction. This is referenced once or twice in the BBC adaptation but Elementary delves more into it, with Watson being Holmes’ “Sober Companion”.

My one main issue with Elementary is that the Score soundsperhaps too similar to the Hans Zimmer score for the Guy Ritchie filmadaptation. Now, you could say I’ve been looking out too intently for faults inthe show. You’d be right, but this fault is very obvious. If you’re remotelyfamiliar with the Hollywood film, you should know that the score is what makesit even more fantastic. It would appear the creators of Elementary havecottoned onto this and have decided to throw in their marginally differentversion of the score. This makes it rather annoying if you’re watching thisshow as a fan of the Guy Ritchie adaptation.

Now, onto the actual review of Elementary rather than mydescription of what’s good and bad about this show. “Finally”, I imagine youare thinking!

For the pilot episode, it isn’t a complete disappointmenthowever there are certainly things they could improve on but it’s not as bad asyou may originally think. The choices for Holmes and Watson were at firstwarily approached, but they bring their own version of the characters to the field, and it works well. Liu's Watson doesn't take any trouble from Sherlock, if he is being disrespectful towards Joan then it is made certain that he is put in his place and knows he is in the wrong. Of course, I imagine the show will getbetter as time goes on. Not every TV show is a goldmine from the offset, but itcertainly has potential. I give Elementary 4 stars out of 5.