Lucy Liu cast as Watson in CBS' Sherlock Holmes show

[Greg Cox]

Gov Kodos wrote:

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Good points, and as I thought Moffatt's Sherlock would be awful, it is premature to think a re-imagining will be bad sight unseen and my predictive powers need better tarot cards.

Exactly. I've personally converted a handful of friends and acquaintances who were suspicious of Sherlock and inclined to reject a modern-day update of Holmes on principle.

They all loved it once I talked them into watching it.

[Allyn Gibson]

foxhot wrote:

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In similar fashion, I haven't seen Guy Ritchie's SHERLOCK films out of principle. Even though I've been a Downey fan since IRON MAN, and I've usually enjoyed Jude Law as well as Ritchie's films, there comes a point where classic characters and their situations are getting warped beyond belief just for the sake of coolness and/or popularity. I've no desire to see Holmes become Action Hero #448 with MATRIX-style action. Good film or not, I don't see much source material left.

The first Downey movie does its own thing. It's a "Holmes vs. the supernatural" in the vein of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The second film, Game of Shadows, though, is a solidly entertaining expansion of "The Final Problem" and it has what is undoubtedly the version of the Reichenbach Falls incident ever committed to film. Yes, it's done, like the first film, with a modern visual and narrative style, but the story is in the right place.

There's a lot about both of the Downey films that makes me think, "Hey, this is the Jeremy Brett series, done for today and with a budget."

Downey's performance as Holmes is compelling. (He doesn't look the part, but for that matter, neither does Benedict Cumberbatch.) He does amplify one aspect of Holmes' characterization -- the manic cocaine addict of the early stories -- but otherwise he's not far removed from Jeremy Brett whose Holmes, though often sedate, was prone to manic outbursts. If Downey falls outside of previous characterizations, it's that his Holmes is more physically active than that of other actors, and he tends to get the snot beaten out of him. And yet none of that that's uncanonical; Doyle's Holmes was a boxing champion and a crack shot, and mixing it up with ruffians was something that he did.

While I know what I would do for a third Downey film (basically, mash "The Empty House" and "The Bruce-Partington Plans" together; the former because it follows "The Final Problem," the latter because it's a logical extension of the events of A Game of Shadows), I really think I'd like to see Downey try and do a sedate Holmes, with scenes in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street, clients upon the stair, Holmes consulting and solving trifling affairs (like purloined letters) without even leaving his chair.

[gblews]

I don't care about Watson being female, I'm just hoping they find a way to get Lucy into outfits that show her legs.

[RJDiogenes]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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We're talking CBS. They don't do art.

No network intentionally creates art-- it's always accidental. But I was talking about the topic of "re-imaginings" in general, not about CBS.

foxhot wrote:

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This just in: Jude Law, Robert Duvall and the portly sidekick from YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES have been cast as CHARLIE'S ANGELS. Bosley is now Octavia Spencer. Madonna is the voice of Charlie. Perhaps it ''looks like America'' when combined. That's such a slippery-slope concept anyhow.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see this.

Greg Cox wrote:

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"WTF? Have those hacks at Universal even read the novel? A hunchbacked assistant, an abnormal brain, villagers with torches, a burning windmill? Where did that come from? And how come the creature can't even talk--and has stupid-looking bolts in his neck? None of that was in the book. Hell, they didn't even get the main character's name right? "Henry Frankenstein?" Everyone knows it's supposed to be Victor.

"Where was the whole arctic finale? How come Elizabeth didn't die? Where was the whole subplot about Justine? And the murder of Victor's little brother? If they were going to make up a whole new plot, why even bother calling it Frankenstein? The whole movie is a slap in the face to Mary Shelley and everyone who has actually read the book.

"But obviously Universal doesn't care about that. They just wanted to churn out some gruesome piece of schlock to cash in on the success of their so-called Dracula with that weird Hungarian dude. Never mind that they're warping classic characters beyond recognition.

"Boycott!"

Nice. You make a good point, though. It hardly matters after 80 years and the movie version has become the more culturally iconic of the two versions, but I do agree that it would have been better to rename the characters and make the movie completely independent of the novel; or at least I would have at the time. You miss the mark at the end, though, because both Frankenstein and Dracula were great movies, so I wouldn't have leveled that criticism.

[Guy Gardener]

I used to think she was sexy because she spent a whole movie punching Mel Gibson in the face back when he was beloved.

His relatively new position as public enemy number one has shot her sex appeal through the roof.

[Allyn Gibson]

RJDiogenes wrote:

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Nice. You make a good point, though. It hardly matters after 80 years and the movie version has become the more culturally iconic of the two versions....

There's a lovely scene in Michael Bishop's Brittle Innings that addresses that. The book is about a group of minor league baseball players in Georgia during World War II, and one of them takes offense to how The Bride of Frankenstein gets all the details wrong.

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Heh. That's funny. I like it.

[Temis the Vorta]

On the issue of copyright infringement, Warner Bros pulled the plug on Quean (which it was making for CBS) because of legal threats from Sony, on the basis that it is too similar to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

I have learned that Warner Bros TV, which produces the project with Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures, yesterday decided to pull the plug upon the advice of an outside legal firm.

...

When it was announced, Quean, written by The L Word creator Ilene Chaiken, sounded like a typical CBS procedural: It centers on an edgy and independent Millennial hacker girl who teams up with an Oakland police detective to solve crimes.

I wonder if this might doom Elemetary, too? Quean was making efforts to change the location, race and gender of characters, and apparently that didn't keep the lawyers at bay:

Chaiken proceeded with an extensive p.1 rewrite of the pilot, changing most key plot elements, including the lead’s employer from a PI to a law firm, her boss from a white male private investigator to a black female lawyer, and the protagonist herself from a loner to a girl with a boyfriend.

CBS has a successful lineup and little need to stick its neck out just for one pilot that probably won't even survive the vicious culling process in May. However, to put this in perspective, it would be more of a case of a corporation not wanting the bother and expense of legal trouble than any real departure from the well established practice of borrowing from everything and anything:

This is a rare legal battle in a business where most new ideas are well forgotten old ones. For instance, the CW pilot The Selection draws parallels to The Hunger Games, the network’s First Cut to Grey’s Anatomy. Sony TV’s CBS drama Baby Big Shot sounds on paper like a male Suits; NBC’s ensemble firefighter drama Chicago Fire is being compared to Rescue Me; and CBS has the modern Sherlock Holmes pilot from CBS TV Studios while Warner Bros has been doing Holmes movies and the BBC has a 21st century Holmes series on the air. The list goes on and on.

There have been attempts at legal action in the past, but but I can’t think of of an outcome similar to this one in television, where the premise is important but key for each project is execution. For example, ABC’s comedy Less Then Perfect was an unofficial U.S. version of Betty La Fea, which didn’t prevent ABC from doing a successful adaptation of the Colombian telenovela several years later in Ugly Betty as the two shows took the original premise of an unattractive female assistant in different directions. Similarly, TNT’s The Closer had been referred to as an unofficial U.S. take on Prime Suspect, but it was very different from NBC’s official remake earlier this season. Maybe Sony is considering doing a Girl With The Dragon Tattoo TV series down the road and wouldn’t want a similar concept in the marketplace.

I actually like the premise of The Selection, and I'm looking forward to that. I hope that one isn't affected by any of this.

[Captaindemotion]

http://www.deadline.com/2012/03/aida...-in-1600-penn/

Another encouraging bit of casting - Aidan Quinn has joined the cast as the chief of police. However, this seems to be an original character called Gregson. No Lestrade then?

[Guy Gardener]

Nancy scared the shit out of him this season in weeds.

Just because he was a billionaire industrialist he thought that slumming it with a secretary might be fun.

Poor Aiden.

They were going to burn you.

[Allyn Gibson]

Captaindemotion wrote:

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http://www.deadline.com/2012/03/aida...-in-1600-penn/

Another encouraging bit of casting - Aidan Quinn has joined the cast as the chief of police. However, this seems to be an original character called Gregson. No Lestrade then?

Lestrade isn't in every story in the Canon. He's only in less than a quarter of the stories. Gregson appears four times (a third of Lestrade's apperances), and Hopkins appears thrice.

[Captaindemotion]

^ Oh, I didn't realise that Gregson was from the original novels. I thought he was a new character.

Still strikes me as odd that they'd have him rather than Lestrade but perhaps they'll cast Lestrade soon too.

[Allyn Gibson]

Captaindemotion wrote:

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^ Oh, I didn't realise that Gregson was from the original novels. I thought he was a new character.

Gregson is one of the few Scotland Yard inspectors for whom Holmes has any regard; Holmes calls him "the smartest of the Scotland Yarders" in A Study in Scarlet.

The other notable Scotland Yard inspector for whom Holmes has any respect is Stanley Hopkins, but he doesn't appear until late in the Canon.

Holmes has almost no respect for Lestrade, but Lestrade is a too thick to realize it. (See "The Six Napoleons.")

[wamdue]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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Gregson is one of the few Scotland Yard inspectors for whom Holmes has any regard; Holmes calls him "the smartest of the Scotland Yarders" in A Study in Scarlet.

The other notable Scotland Yard inspector for whom Holmes has any respect is Stanley Hopkins, but he doesn't appear until late in the Canon.

which actually goes to show that there are is plenty of Sherlock canon for this show to "explore" without stealing from the BBC TV series.

[Temis the Vorta]

Was that ever in any doubt?