I’m still not convinced Lucy Liu was the right casting, but I take back everything I said about Jonny Lee Miller - this four minute preview is the most I’ve ever liked him. The show looks much better than the pilot script suggested to me it would be. Could be potential here after all!
NEW - Elementary - 4 min Exclusive Preview uploaded for people who live outside the U.S & are blocked from watching it on youtube…here ya go!
PUT IT IN ME
-__- This just looks like a typical CBS crime procedural to me, and I doubt I’ll be able to watch more than one episode, if that.
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This… I don’t hate it. I really don’t hate it. Oh, I still loathe and despise CBS’s bullshit surrounding Elementary, but: I don’t hate this. Miller seems to be playing this in a slightly more rough-and-tumble fashion, which is an unusual but still very canonical take on Holmes. I also feel MUCH better about Watson here. I’ve never quibbled with the genderswap, or Liu’s casting. The initial teaser made it less clear that we might still have a Watson. I think we might still have a WATSON.
The thing of it is, I really do want this not to suck. I want the cross-pollination of audiences. I want more people reading Doyle, watching Sherlock, watching the Ritchie films and Rathbone and the Grenada series. I want them watching The Great Mouse Detective and Wishbone. I want them reading pastiches because they can’t get enough of Sherlock Holmes and his Watson.
I also really, really, really despair of CBS being able to shake the taint they created by doing this so hard on the heels of Sherlock’s broadcast and the rebuffed offer to license the show from the BBC/PBS.
I can see possibility in Elementary. The cut of this even ameliorates the gasp-and-run-away that seemed to happen in the original teaser. I’m willing to see how this plays out. Perhaps the sad thing is that no matter how well-made (or poorly-made) this turns out to be, it’s almost impossible to view it without awareness of the controversy surrounding it. If CBS hadn’t been in a rush to bring something relevant to air as its Holmesian-derivative CSI franchises age into the sunset, maybe Elementary would be seen for what it is, as a show.
And maybe without the legal sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, the production would seem less doomed.
