A First Take on "Elementary"

Nice plug for my second McCabe - Cody mystery! 

Everyone will form their own opinion of the new CBS series "Elementary," which I previewed this week. Here's mine:

I thought the first episode was a good mystery, with some suitably Sherlockian deductions and a clever solution. It's hard to tell from the first episode whether the relationship between the two main characters will be interesting over the long haul, but it seemed promising.

My guess, though, is that Sherlock Holmes fans around the world will not develop the passion for this reworking of our hero that they have for BBC's "Sherlock" series. The difference between these two 21st century Sherlocks is quite clear, and not to CBS's credit.

BBC's Holmes and Watson are very much Arthur Conan Doyle's original characters transported to a different time with the same address, the same minor characters, and the same relationship. It's easy to imagine that they are just what Holmes and Watson would be like if they were born more than a century later than they actually were.

This series has brought millions of viewers into the orbit of Sherlock Holmes, many of young, as well as generally delighting long-time fans.

The CBS version, by contrast, could have gotten along quite well by giving the main characters different names -- because they are, in fact, different characters from Holmes and Watson.

Sherlock does have some of the freneticism of the original and deductive genius of the original. He also keeps bees -- on the roof of his New York brownstone. But Joan Watson has nothing all in common with John H. except a medical degree. Gender is almost the least of their differences. 

Depending on how well the series develops, it could build an audience. But I wonder whether many Sherlockians will be part of it.