Spoilers WATSON: New Sherlock Holmes-based series on CBS

[Shamrock Holmes]

The 1950s American television series with Ronald Howard and Howard Marion Crawford mostly avoided the buffoonish image of Watson and portrayed him pretty faithfully, but aside from that, the idea of Watson as a buffoon dominated in popular culture until the Jeremy Brett series came along.

Which is why the Jeremy Brett series is my favourite "classic" Holmes.

Though ironically despite the Cumberbatch/Freeman version doing a good job of this aspect, it's probably my least favourite of the three "main" adaptions from that era (IMO, the Downey/Law version gets points for leaning into the more physical side of Holmes' skill than most, and Elementary gets points for taking the spirit of the characters and doing something novel and interesting with them while modernising the "core concept" more successfully than Sherlock did).

 

[Christopher]

Which is why the Jeremy Brett series is my favourite "classic" Holmes.

Unhh... Thank you for making me feel really old. I think of it as the first modern Holmes series, with the last gasp of the pre-modern version being Young Sherlock Holmes, which came out a year or so after the first Brett series but was very much an homage to the Rathbone/Bruce series, right down to the title sequence.

Though ironically despite the Cumberbatch/Freeman version doing a good job of this aspect, it's probably my least favourite of the three "main" adaptions from that era (IMO, the Downey/Law version gets points for leaning into the more physical side of Holmes' skill than most, and Elementary gets points for taking the spirit of the characters and doing something novel and interesting with them while modernising the "core concept" more successfully than Sherlock did).

Here's where I link to my 2014 Locus Online guest column comparing Sherlock and Elementary:

Christopher L. Bennett Guest Post–“The Problem with Sherlock in a Post-Elementary World”

The recent return of the BBC’s Sherlock from its long hiatus gave television audiences our first chance to see new episodes of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s modernization of Sherlock …

locusmag.com

In short, I agree with your assessment. Sherlock was too in love with its own cleverness and edginess, more flash than substance.

There was another "modern Holmes" series in that era, Japan's Miss Sherlock, a very Sherlock-inspired 8-episode series reinventing Holmes and Watson as Japanese women in modern Tokyo. I reviewed that one on my Patreon. It was interesting but flawed.

 

[Christopher]

A strong, well-written episode this week, a bit of a departure from the usual formula, focusing on Shinwell's experiences as a student nurse and fleshing out the hospital beyond the Holmes Clinic. A very nice closing monologue tying together the thematic threads of the various subplots. Some nice grace notes here and there, like the subtle arc of Watson and Mary watching it rain from the roof, and Shinwell trying to figure out the usage of "yinz."

They've improved the doubling effects on the Croft twins this season. Last season, it seemed they generally tried to avoid any complex camera tricks with the twins, mostly just keeping them in separate shots or on opposite sides of a simple split screen. This year, they're getting more ambitious. The scene of the brothers talking in the break room was nicely done, with a moving camera and everything.

 

[Procutus]

I noticed they've given the twins slightly different haircuts, to help distinguish which one is which (the glasses on Stephens aside).

 

[Unionized Elf]

They had the different haircuts in season 1. There's a feature on the DVD set in which the actor talks about the process of becoming each twin, and the differing hairstyles is explained there.

 

[Christopher]

They had the different haircuts in season 1. There's a feature on the DVD set in which the actor talks about the process of becoming each twin, and the differing hairstyles is explained there.

The actor's hair was styled differently for the two brothers in season 1, but I think the length was the same. Now, they've cut his hair short for Adam and have him wear a hairpiece as Stephens (I think I've got that the right way around). It makes it easier to tell them apart, but it makes Stephens's hair look a bit less natural if you're looking for it.

Speaking of hair, Morris Chestnut looked really different with hair in the flashback this week. For a moment, I wasn't sure it was the same actor. And I'm impressed that a 56-year-old man was able to look so convincing as a 36-year-old man.

 

[Christopher]

A fairly interesting case this week, and a return appearance by Sherlock Holmes, as well as Lestrade and Mycroft, though not together. The way Craig Sweeny writes Sherlock here is not that different from how he and his colleagues wrote him on Elementary, despite the age difference -- roguish, witty, eccentric, prone to grand gestures and disregarding boundaries.

There was some sloppy writing here, though. It's hard to believe that Watson would be so casual about telling Lestrade he has access to the world's greatest detective when he's supposed to be keeping Holmes's survival a secret. And it's rather absurd that Mary saw Watson's dinner table set for two with a British dish, then heard Lestrade mention his reference to a great detective, and didn't immediately figure out that Holmes was alive.

 

[Christopher]

An okay episode, if rather heavy-handed, juxtaposing and contrasting an obnoxious longevity-obsessed billionaire and an impoverished cancer patient who predictably turned out to be sick because of the billionaire (and the attempt to handwave the coincidence of them both coming to the clinic at the same time was not entirely convincing, though at least they acknowledged it). What was strange was their decision to name the billionaire after Joseph Bell, the brilliantly perceptive doctor who was Arthur Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. It seems disrespectful to give Dr. Bell's name to such a creep. They should've saved it for, say, Watson's mentor. (Elementary, of course, homaged him with the regular character of Detective Marcus Bell.)

Meanwhile, Mycroft is starting to catch on about Sherlock, so things are heating up there. And Stephens is dealing with depression and debating whether to try therapy, though the attempt to rationalize why a doctor would be reluctant to see a therapist was another thing they lampshaded but didn't justify very convincingly. Also, it turns out that the twins actually are named Stephens and Adams, but Adam changed his name because he hated that. Also, Stephens is actually Stephens Croft V, though we don't know how many prior Adamseseseses there were in the family.

 

[Unionized Elf]

At first when they mentioned the typo of spelling Adam's name Adams, I thought it was just a meta reference to many websites referring to him as Adams back during S1, which IIRC, one of the writers actually had to clarify in an interview that his name was Adam. Though they instead seem to be making a plot point out of it, with his birthname having indeed been Adams.

 

[Christopher]

At first when they mentioned the typo of spelling Adam's name Adams, I thought it was just a meta reference to many websites referring to him as Adams back during S1, which IIRC, one of the writers actually had to clarify in an interview that his name was Adam. Though they instead seem to be making a plot point out of it, with his birthname having indeed been Adams.

I think it's both -- the plot point is a meta reference to the audience confusion. Wouldn't be the first time that happened in fiction.

 

[Christopher]

An okay episode, fleshing out Watson's family life and history, although men having fraught relationships with their fathers is kind of a cliche (albeit not without justification). It's also at least the second time this season that Watson's used the clinic's personnel and resources for a personal matter, which seems inappropriate, especially since Annabelle's symptoms didn't really seem that serious at first, so it was unclear why he thought it was a case that would need his team to get involved. Also, I wasn't convinced that the risk from the brain surgery was serious enough to justify Annabelle's refusal. It seemed she was overreacting to something with a very low probability of happening. Still, Piper Curda gave a very potent performance as Annabelle.

Okay... so the actor playing Watson's father here, Clarke Peters, is only 17 years older than Morris Chestnut. And Shane Dean, who played the club manager said to be the same age as Watson, doesn't have his age listed anywhere I can find, but has only been acting since 2003, so I doubt he's much over 40. I suspect, then, that Watson is intended to be somewhat younger than Chestnut.

 

[Christopher]

A pretty by-the-numbers bomb-threat episode this week, nothing special. I don't think I like where the plot with Ingrid and the psychopath guy Beck is going. The show seems to be getting more melodramatic lately.

 

[Christopher]

This week's episode didn't work well for me. Yet again, Watson uses his clinic's personnel and resources to help someone he's personally connected with, his girlfriend's son in this case, and I continue to wonder about the ethics of that. It's also rather coincidental that they start out tacking the boy's AI addiction as a novel form of disease, then just randomly discover that the girl he's interested in has a life-threatening brain injury. And that's alongside a Shinwell subplot where he seems to be getting romantically involved with his boss/trainer, which hardly seems appropriate, as he even lampshades. The gimmicky inclusion of Shannon Purser as the imaginary embodiment of an AI chatbot based on herself feels like a desperate ploy to boost ratings, which is odd, since I thought the show was a hit.

 

[Unionized Elf]

Something I'm noticing is this season seems to have a habit of Mary performing surgery almost every week, which is a bit odd given she's the one who runs the entire hospital. I suppose we should just accept this as one of those TV things, she's main cast and each plot doesn't always require the hospital's administrator to weigh in, and as her and Watson seem to be moving on from their relationship they got to work her into the episode somehow.

 

[Christopher]

Something I'm noticing is this season seems to have a habit of Mary performing surgery almost every week, which is a bit odd given she's the one who runs the entire hospital. I suppose we should just accept this as one of those TV things, she's main cast and each plot doesn't always require the hospital's administrator to weigh in, and as her and Watson seem to be moving on from their relationship they got to work her into the episode somehow.

Yeah, I noticed that too. They have to work the regulars in somehow, and Mary's the only one who's a surgeon.