12:16 pm - 12/19/2012
Rob Doherty's choice to pair Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes with a woman resulted in fall's No. 1 new series, and inclusion in THR's 2012 Rule Breakers portfolio.
"It started out as something of a joke," creator Rob Doherty confesses of his decision to make the Watson in his Sherlock Holmes tale a woman. When he began to research the story's original characters, he came across a handful of experts who had written up psychological assessments of Sherlock; one of them had noted an aversion to women.
"I thought to myself, 'What would make Holmes crazier than taking the figurative rock he has in Watson and making him a woman?' I scribbled it down and then went back to my research," the 38-year-old Elementary showrunner continues. "The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it."
The result: casting Asian-American film star Lucy Liu as the first female Watson opposite Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock and an impressive 13.9 million viewers tuning in weekly, making Elementary the No. 1 new series with total viewers this fall. (Among the key 18-to-49 set, the series ranks No. 2 behind only NBC's breakout Revolution.) And come February, the CBS drama -- one of the season's few hits with critics and audiences alike -- will get the coveted post-Super Bowl slot.
The show's stars, Liu, 44, and Miller, 40, still are making sense of the series' success, particularly rewarding because the show colors outside the lines in a way that excites both of them.
"To me, one of the best things you can do in this profession is to take a risk," says Miller, whose co-star plays sober coach to his recovering-addict Sherlock. Liu says the tweak in formula can liberate the story in other ways as well: "There's an endless supply of unpredictability that we can delve into and we can change and add. It will still be a pound cake, but it could be marble, it could be lemon, it could be poppy seed."
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DELICIOUS VIDEO @ SRC
Elementary: Female Watson 'Started as a Joke'
Rob Doherty's choice to pair Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes with a woman resulted in fall's No. 1 new series, and inclusion in THR's 2012 Rule Breakers portfolio.
"It started out as something of a joke," creator Rob Doherty confesses of his decision to make the Watson in his Sherlock Holmes tale a woman. When he began to research the story's original characters, he came across a handful of experts who had written up psychological assessments of Sherlock; one of them had noted an aversion to women.
"I thought to myself, 'What would make Holmes crazier than taking the figurative rock he has in Watson and making him a woman?' I scribbled it down and then went back to my research," the 38-year-old Elementary showrunner continues. "The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it."
The result: casting Asian-American film star Lucy Liu as the first female Watson opposite Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock and an impressive 13.9 million viewers tuning in weekly, making Elementary the No. 1 new series with total viewers this fall. (Among the key 18-to-49 set, the series ranks No. 2 behind only NBC's breakout Revolution.) And come February, the CBS drama -- one of the season's few hits with critics and audiences alike -- will get the coveted post-Super Bowl slot.
The show's stars, Liu, 44, and Miller, 40, still are making sense of the series' success, particularly rewarding because the show colors outside the lines in a way that excites both of them.
"To me, one of the best things you can do in this profession is to take a risk," says Miller, whose co-star plays sober coach to his recovering-addict Sherlock. Liu says the tweak in formula can liberate the story in other ways as well: "There's an endless supply of unpredictability that we can delve into and we can change and add. It will still be a pound cake, but it could be marble, it could be lemon, it could be poppy seed."
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DELICIOUS VIDEO @ SRC
But I just can't with people who are like "I love Sherlock Holmes but hate procedurals" it makes my teeth hurt.
Yes, all true. When people complain that the mysteries are too simple. Well, the mysteries in Sherlock Holmes were not complicated. It was pretty much Sherlock following the bread crumb trail left by the criminal, it really was never a complex mystery thing.
People need to brush up on Sherlock Holmes is and what it created, before complaining that it is what it is.
Most people consider that justifiable rudeness.
Holmes was much more balanced and much less mean in the original stories than he is on the BBC -- and that's fine. I'm not knocking the interpretation at all, I dig Cumberpatches. But that doesn't mean it's canon.
But yes, BBC Sherlock is a really well put together show. Everything but the writing is absolutely fantastic. The writing has a lot of faults but there are a lot high points there too. From what I can remember, they do write Mycroft pretty close to ACD's description (smarter than Sherlock, government, partial to food), though I hate that their relationship is strained in BBC. I'm really quite partial to their Mycroft.
I don't agree that BBC's cases are harder than Elementary either. A Study in Pink was pretty obvious from the beginning. Moriarty rather than the cases drives the drama in the others.
But the BBC is very far removed from canon -- which is why it makes me want to hit my head on a wall when people talk about how not canon Elementary is. I mean, BBC Irene is an insult to the strength of character and intelligence of the original Irene. Sherlock has lost his gentlemanly flare and is now a bit like a stuck-up, sulking spoiled smarty-pants teen -- and Jim. Jim. My precious Jim. He's the first Moriarty that hasn't made me want to go to sleep. But he's about as far from canon as you can get. Sometimes the changes work, sometimes they don't.
Honestly, something being more or less canon obviously doesn't make it more or less valid, so the whole line of argument is kinda silly in whether something should be liked or not, but it kills me when the people who make those arguments for BBC have read nothing. Mind you I tend to like adaptations more than ACD, because I hate ACD's mystery writing style/Watson's 1st person narrative (far more of a Christie fan).
I loved how apologetically crazy, no I won't see the light, darkness is better you fools, Jim was. But yeah, that's a far cry from a professor.