Which of the two shows do you think is the best modern take on Sherlock Holmes?
CBS Elementary vs. BBC Sherlock
- Thread starter Joe Washington
- Start date
Well, the simplest way for me to answer is to link to my Locus article on the subject. In short, I think both have merits and both have things they do better, but I'm more satisfied and less frustrated with Elementary on the whole. Still, I'm glad they both exist and provide their own distinct takes on the premise.
Hmm, interesting. Your article certainly explains why I was feeling put off by Sherlock. I can't remember how many episodes of it I watched, maybe it was the first season, but I always came away feeling like his traits were way exaggerated much the same way as the RDJ Holmes movies. I came away far more impressed by Elementary with the grounded approach.
Either way, I think it's nice to see that two of them can offer different things to audiences. There's enough Holmes for everyone.
Either way, I think it's nice to see that two of them can offer different things to audiences. There's enough Holmes for everyone.
Both are good at what they do. Sherlock is a faster paced and much amped up Holmes than Elementary. However, the sociopath business has gotten on my nerves and the last series ending with everyone around John being some kind of sociopath was a bit too much. Moriarty was just shark jumping. It's still well made and the mysteries are done with great cleverness and verve.
Elementary is slower since it gives us far more material in a season. The mysteries are more often window dressing to the relationships Joan and Sherlock have with the folks around them. Also, Sherlock is quite fascinating for being so openly flawed with his addiction and his anti-social awkwardness which is worked through over the course of the series with advances and failures in those areas. He is a much more human character for that.
All in all, Sherlock provides better mysteries but Elementary provides far more satisfying character stories for its regulars for my tastes.
Elementary is slower since it gives us far more material in a season. The mysteries are more often window dressing to the relationships Joan and Sherlock have with the folks around them. Also, Sherlock is quite fascinating for being so openly flawed with his addiction and his anti-social awkwardness which is worked through over the course of the series with advances and failures in those areas. He is a much more human character for that.
All in all, Sherlock provides better mysteries but Elementary provides far more satisfying character stories for its regulars for my tastes.
I resisted watching Elementary for a long time but once I caved in I was quickly hooked. I think Miller and Liu are fab, and I love the addiction angle but...for me Sherlock is more evocative of Sherlock Holmes than Elementary. I'm conscious that I haven't read many Holmes stories, so my perception of the character is drawn mainly from the Rathbone films and the Brett TV series but I can only work with what I know 
It might come down to something as simple as the fact that although both are modern adaptations, Sherlock at least remains set in England, whereas Elementary has not only time but distance separating it from more familiar adaptations. It still makes me smile at how wrong it sounds when New York cops start introducing 'Sherlock Holmes"
Also when all's said and done you can't deny that Elementary is just another American police procedural with a quirky outsider detective ala Castle or the Mentalist; which is fine, I love Rick Castle and Patrick Jayne and everyone around them, much as I love Sherlock and Joan, Gregson, Bell, Alfredo etc. etc. But I think Miller could be playing a character named Algernon Pike and the show could work just as well. By contrast whilst I wouldn't claim Sherlock is the most original TV show ever, it's certainly more unique and Cumberbatch playing Algernon Pike wouldn't work at all.
In the final analysis I love them both and wouldn't want to see either end. Sherlock is more substantial but Elementary gives you more bang for your buck down to simple season size. Sherlock's handled Mycroft and Lestrade much better but I think Elementary had the better Moriarty. Cumberbatch is a better actor and a better Holmes but Miller is a much more likeable screen presence. I think the only area where I wouldn't express a preference is over the Watsons. If pressed I might have to go with Liu, if only because whilst neither is the Nigel Bruce'esq Buffoon, Freeman comes slightly closer to that caricature.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to start writing The Adventures of Algernon Pike...
Edited to add. I don't completely agree Christopher but I found your article really interesting and insightful all the same
It might come down to something as simple as the fact that although both are modern adaptations, Sherlock at least remains set in England, whereas Elementary has not only time but distance separating it from more familiar adaptations. It still makes me smile at how wrong it sounds when New York cops start introducing 'Sherlock Holmes"
Also when all's said and done you can't deny that Elementary is just another American police procedural with a quirky outsider detective ala Castle or the Mentalist; which is fine, I love Rick Castle and Patrick Jayne and everyone around them, much as I love Sherlock and Joan, Gregson, Bell, Alfredo etc. etc. But I think Miller could be playing a character named Algernon Pike and the show could work just as well. By contrast whilst I wouldn't claim Sherlock is the most original TV show ever, it's certainly more unique and Cumberbatch playing Algernon Pike wouldn't work at all.
In the final analysis I love them both and wouldn't want to see either end. Sherlock is more substantial but Elementary gives you more bang for your buck down to simple season size. Sherlock's handled Mycroft and Lestrade much better but I think Elementary had the better Moriarty. Cumberbatch is a better actor and a better Holmes but Miller is a much more likeable screen presence. I think the only area where I wouldn't express a preference is over the Watsons. If pressed I might have to go with Liu, if only because whilst neither is the Nigel Bruce'esq Buffoon, Freeman comes slightly closer to that caricature.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to start writing The Adventures of Algernon Pike...
Edited to add. I don't completely agree Christopher but I found your article really interesting and insightful all the same
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Wow, I really disagree. As I said in my article, I feel that Sherlock's writers aren't interested in the mysteries at all -- it's not a mystery show so much as a relationship comedy-drama about people who happen to solve mysteries. Elementary, as a procedural, is more invested in, well, the procedure, the deductive process itself, the solving of puzzles.
I resisted watching Elementary for a long time but once I caved in I was quickly hooked. I think Miller and Liu are fab, and I love the addiction angle but...for me Sherlock is more evocative of Sherlock Holmes than Elementary. I'm conscious that I haven't read many Holmes stories, so my perception of the character is drawn mainly from the Rathbone films and the Brett TV series but I can only work with what I know
Those are two really different examples. The Rathbone films took enormous liberties, most infamously turning Watson from a capable and intelligent man of action into a doddering buffoon, as well as modernizing the characters to the then-present day much as Elementary and Sherlock do. The Brett series, by contrast, is one of the most authentic screen adaptations of the Holmes canon ever made.
Still, nothing beats the original stories themselves. It's only 4 novels and 56 short stories, so it's not a huge investment of time to get through. Although it helps to be patient with 19th- and early 20th-century storytelling conventions. A couple of the novels just use Holmes and Watson to frame flashback stories about other characters and events altogether.
Which doesn't make one right and the other wrong; they're just different. Creativity is about taking an idea and changing it in one way or another. Arthur Conan Doyle took the medical deductive methods of his mentor Dr. Joseph Bell and asked what it would be like if they were applied to crime, and Sherlock Holmes was born. "What if Sherlock Holmes operated in New York?" is as valid a variation on the theme as "What if Sherlock Holmes lived today?" They're both taking the character out of his familiar context and thereby allowing new possibilities to be explored.
I wouldn't say it's "just" another procedural. Every show belongs to a genre, but some are better examples of it than others. Was The West Wing just another political drama, or was it the best political drama of our generation? Was Star Trek just another space show, or was it an innovative space show that transcended its contemporaries? Yes, Elementary is another American police procedural, but it's one of the best ones. It's a compelling narrative about recovery and redemption. It's a series that embraces diversity and inclusion better than most, without feeling self-conscious about it.
And you could say just as much that Sherlock is "just" another example of Steven Moffat's well-made but self-indulgent professional fan fiction. It's not really all that different from Jekyll or Doctor Who in its style and approach. Every show is "just another" something.
Hugh Laurie's title character in House, M.D. was basically Sherlock Holmes as a modern-day doctor, inverting Doyle's creative process from Bell to Holmes. Many modern-day quirky or antisocial detective characters are based on Holmes to one degree or another. So why not just be open about it and use Holmes himself?
And personally I think Miller's Holmes is closer to the source than Cumberbatch's. The latter is just too exaggerated. The literary Holmes wasn't a so-called "sociopath"; he was emotionally detached and uninterested in women or sex, but he had compassion and regard for others, and a deep outrage at injustice. And he didn't vanish into a hallucinatory "mind palace" to solve his crimes with magical intuitive leaps; he examined the clues and employed deductive reasoning and analysis.
I think Martin Freeman is the better actor -- really, he's brilliant, and I've rarely seen an actor who conveyed so much just by silently reacting to others, which makes him perfect for characters like Watson and Bilbo -- but Joan Watson is a more effective charcter. As I said in the article, John Hamish Watson is basically just an enabler who lets Sherlock exploit his addiction to danger and drag him down deeper into destructive behavior, while Joan has had a much more profound and positive influence on her Sherlock while also being influenced positively by him to become a detective in her own right. We've never seen a Watson who was as much an equal partner to Holmes -- discounting things like Without a Clue where Holmes was just a front for Watson.
I enjoy both, they are certainly different enough from eachother to live side by side. Since Elementary has a lot more episodes a season it is easier to forgive weaker/less liked episodes. If you don't like an episode of Sherlock that's one third of a season you don't like.
I've never watched Elementary, but have watched as much Sherlock as BCCA has allowed me to. This part of your article hits the nail on the head for me.
At first, I actually wondered if Benedict's Holmes was psychic since he was rattling off exactly what had happened without the benefit of explaining it, or the audience seeing the clues.
Maybe if I get the blu-rays and do a proper re-watch, I'll see it differently?
I like them both.
For me, the biggest difference is Cumby is a Holmes in the 21st century and JLM is Holmes of the 21 century.
I thought the last Sherlock episode really emphasized this. The Sherlock writers basically just take Holmes out of Victorian London and plop him into modern times. Where as the Elementary writers adapted his personality to better fit modern society.
I think the best example of this is how each treats CSI people. Cumby has nothing but contempt for them and thinks they're in his way. JLM, OTOH, treats them as professionals and understand that there are things modern investigation practices and technology can do that the classic Holmes "eye" cannot. He instead tries to work in concert with them in a supplementary way. JLM Holmes is also much better at incorporating modern technology and mores into is own work. His "alliance" with everyone-is-anonymous, for example.
I thought the last Sherlock episode really emphasized this. The Sherlock writers basically just take Holmes out of Victorian London and plop him into modern times. Where as the Elementary writers adapted his personality to better fit modern society.
I think the best example of this is how each treats CSI people. Cumby has nothing but contempt for them and thinks they're in his way. JLM, OTOH, treats them as professionals and understand that there are things modern investigation practices and technology can do that the classic Holmes "eye" cannot. He instead tries to work in concert with them in a supplementary way. JLM Holmes is also much better at incorporating modern technology and mores into is own work. His "alliance" with everyone-is-anonymous, for example.
Oh, very well said. Yes, I agree -- as I said in my article, I think Sherlock mainly just modernized the tech and the stylistic approach, while Elementary modernized the attitudes and worldview.
For me, the most problematical aspect of a modernized Holmes story is the fact that modern police and forensic techniques basically owe their existence to the fact that Holmes was around as a literary character in the 19th century. The Doyle stories popularized methods of scientific detection that were little-known and little-used in a time when police work relied mainly on eyewitness accounts and (generally coerced) confessions. The police departments that took the lead in adopting them were largely inspired to do so by the Holmes stories, and some techniques that were pure science fiction when Doyle wrote about them (like a test to distinguish human from animal blood) were invented in real life by people who got the idea from the stories. So it seems to me that in a world where Sherlock Holmes never existed as a fictional character, the state of modern police work might well be less advanced. Yet both modern Holmes series show police forensics existing on the same level as in our world, a world where the character of Holmes existed to inspire those advances. Sometimes I feel I'd rather see these shows portraying an alternate world where police forensics is much less advanced today due to the absence of the Holmes literary canon. Or at least a world that offers a plausible alternative path for the evolution of police forensics.
Also, since Holmes was essentially the first forensic scientist, his methods which were so unique in Victorian and Edwardian times are pretty much routine crime-lab stuff today. So it's harder to make him stand out as an exceptional detective, and modern Holmes stories tend to focus on his extraordinary and probably neuro-atypical gifts for observation and deduction, letting him see in a flash of insight what others would eventually be able to arrive at through hard work. So it's become less about his methods, which are now every police department's methods, and more about his savant qualities. And that's a bit of a shame, because the thing about the original Holmes's methods was that they could be taught. Granted, Watson never wielded them as well as Holmes himself, but they were a mix of innate genius and learned skill, rather than just the former.
Then again, Elementary did show that Holmes's methods could be learned, since Watson has now become almost as good a detective as Holmes is. While Sherlock has gone the other way and mythologized Holmes's deductive genius into a magical mind palace that can hallucinate entire imaginary worlds.
I enjoy both, but generally prefer Elementary to Sherlock.
More and more, I feel the same way. A few years ago I probably would have said the opposite. But Sherlock just seems to be more of the same, and Moffat's verbal gymnastics just aren't enough anymore.
It's funny because I only ever started watching Elementary for very shallow reasons: that is, for most of my adult life, I've thought Lucy Liu to be the single most beautiful woman on the planet. Yet Joan has genuinely become one of my favorite TV characters ever.
She does have amazing eyes.
Given the stories were only translated into German after the invention of this test, I'd need to see evidence for this claim. I certainly have never seen anything to link the work of Doyle and Paul Uhlenhuth - it's sounds similar to 'the first interracial kiss on tv'.
^Maybe I'm misremembering, then.
Like most (all?! I didn't read all the posts) in here, I like both shows, but prefer Elementary.
On a sidenote, I realized something recently, and just had to make this:
On a sidenote, I realized something recently, and just had to make this:
^Elementary's Sherlock hasn't played a Marvel character yet, but Elementary's Mycroft, Rhys Ifans, was Curt Connors in The Amazing Spider-Man. And Holmes's apprentice Kitty Winter, Ophelia Lovibond, was Carina in Guardians of the Galaxy. (And the show's composer, Sean Callery, scored Jessica Jones.)
He could be Cypher.
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