Lucy Liu cast as Watson in CBS' Sherlock Holmes show

[Allyn Gibson]

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/aid...entary-descendants-amara-miller-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]

http://www.deadline.com/2012/03/aid...entary-descendants-amara-miller-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]

^ 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]

^ 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.

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?

 

[23skidoo]

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:

Yeah, but Quean (which I'd never heard of till that report came out) isn't based on a widely known concept that many assume is in the public domain (as the makers of TNG found out was not the case). Elementary is a new version of an established story without changing names, etc. Same as if two competing Frankenstein or Dracula series were created. I can't see there being any legal recourse for the BBC, anymore than for the makers of the Downey movie.

It's not the same scenario than if, say, a US network commissioned a TV series about a British secret agent named James Gunn Agent 666 who has a license to kill and who travels the world womanizing and killing off supervillians. Eon Productions, owners of James Bond, would take umbrage. And the descriptions I've read about Quean offer the same kind of similarities with the Girl movies, so the legal whip cracking is not surprising. I was expecting to see the same thing happen with The Hunger Games, which is almost identical in concept to Battle Royale, but the powers that be have made it clear the similarities were coincidental, so last I heard the Japanese rights holders of Battle Royale haven't been making any noises. Yet. We'll wait and see if Hunger Games enters the $500 million club or not.

Alex

 

[Greg Cox]

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:

Yeah, but Quean (which I'd never heard of till that report came out) isn't based on a widely known concept that many assume is in the public domain (as the makers of TNG found out was not the case). Elementary is a new version of an established story without changing names, etc. Same as if two competing Frankenstein or Dracula series were created. I can't see there being any legal recourse for the BBC, anymore than for the makers of the Downey movie.

Exactly. It's not like any of the new versions invented Holmes and Watson, or even the idea of setting them in the present-day.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I don't think the BBC has any valid case here, either. But a corporation doesn't need to have a good legal case in order to make trouble. All they need is money to pay their lawyers and the will to pursue legal action. They can make enough trouble to shut down a production simply because nobody wants the headache of dealing with that shit.

So this is less about whether the BBC has a valid case than whether they have the resources to make as much trouble as Sony could have. That's what I find doubtful.

However, CBS has just renewed a ton of shows, and they have a fair number of pilots in contention, which means any single pilot is going to have a big uphill battle to get a series order. If the BBC made any trouble at all, that could be enough to get CBS to pass over Elementary in favor of something that won't be any legal bother at all.

 

[Captain_Nick]

Further proof that CBS’ in-the-works Sherlock Holmes reboot will take the iconic franchise in a radical new direction: The network has cast Lucy Liu as Watson!

TVLine has learned that Liu has been tapped to play Watson to Jonny Lee Miller‘s Sherlock in Elementary, the network’s modern-day take on the famed detective saga.

Another key change: Sherlock and Watson now live in New York City.

http://www.tvline.com/2012/02/lucy-liu-sherlock-holmes-elementary/

Seriously, what the hell? Why make Watson female? This looks like it is going to be so stupid.

Because the script writers are absolutely terrified of homosexual tension. Mark my words, Holmes is going to 'do' Watson

 

[Forbin]

But not till season five, so they can stretch out the sexual tension.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If only they'd put this on the CW! Then the hoyay would not only be necessary but mandatory!

Of course Holmes and Watson would look like the Salvatore Brothers, but you can't have everything. Hmm, there's a thought...what if they were brothers?

 

[Nerys Myk]

If only they'd put this on the CW! Then the hoyay would not only be necessary but mandatory!

Of course Holmes and Watson would look like the Salvatore Brothers, but you can't have everything. Hmm, there's a thought...what if they were brothers?

Sherlock has enough brothers, as it is.

 

[Starkers]

Hmm...

Well I guess it's possible that this isn't his Sherlock outfit, and is just Miller's regular clothes, and I guess there's only so many different looks for a guy, but still if you were trying to distance yourselves from accusations of ripping off the BBC, would you really dress your guy that much like Cumberbatch?

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ I don't know if it's all that similar. Cumberbatch's distinctive coat is a lot longer. The scarf is a bit reminiscent, I suppose, but a lot of guys wear scarves.

 

[Starkers]

Oh I know it's a bit of a stretch, but given the BBC were already making noises, don't you think it might have been prudent to avoid any similarities, and whilst lots of blokes wear a scarf, they don't neccesarily all wear them the same way.