TV Series 'Elementary' and Sherlock Holmes

Hello friends, this post is dedicated to detective writings and filming because I am going to talk about a series named ‘Elementary’ that is an American series and famous worldwide.

Elementary, as I told, is an American, detective series which has tried to replicate the detective adventures of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in a modern American Society in 21^st century instead of London in 19^th and 20^th century. As we all know the detective adventures of Sherlock Holmes has been written by the great author of the nineteenth century, Sir Arthur Canon Doyle. With all the writings of the detective Sherlock Holmes, Sir Doyle only proved his own detective skills. At that time, it was not surprising to hear that, later he himself started to solve the crimes and cases as a detective. The letter started arriving at his address asking for help as a detective. And, he went on with solving cases and helping people and police with his detective skills. His books of Sherlock Holmes became most popular in the society of London back then and it is as popular as then, now. His work of Sherlock took the detective literature as well as the work of detectives and there thinking and perceiving ideas to a new level, not only in London but in the whole world.

It attracted the authors of coming generations to appreciate the work of Sir Doyle and learn the art of writing and thinking. It also attracted the real detectives of real-life to learn from the work of Sherlock, and improve their detective skills and apply it to real cases as naturally as possible.

In the modern age of virtual entertainment, apart from being central attention of the lovers of literature or detective fictions, it also attracted many movies and series directors and producers. Soon, the famous Sherlock Holmes reached into theatres from the world of literature. Many, TV series and movies have made streaming the story of great adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his best friend John Watson.

Elementary is one of those, it stars Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Joan H. Watson.

One of the most interesting thing about this series is the character of John Watson. In original fiction written by Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, John Watson is a male character and a retired army doctor. While searching for the room on rent, he meets one of his friend who introduces him to Sherlock Holmes with the idea of flat sharing. But, as he starts living, he becomes Sherlock Holmes’ assistant and later both become a best friend. Since this part of the story is different in the series Elementary and I think, that is what made me try this series in the first place.

So, first of all, the character John Watson is not a male, instead, it is a female named Joan Watson. The story is set in New York, America instead of London, England. Well, the background story is that Sherlock Holmes was working as a consulting detective for the police in London and worked on many cases with detective Lestrade. In London, he crossed path with a young beautiful lady and a gifted artist named Irene Adler and later, both fell in love. But later, she is killed by a serial killer who goes by the name the ‘M’. The unexpected death of Irene Adler and the inability of finding her led Sherlock Holmes into drug addiction. Due to the drug addiction, he was shifted to New York and admitted into a hospital for rehabilitation by his father Morland Holmes. His father was a very wealthy businessman to whom Sherlock didn’t like.

The first episode of the series starts with the introduction of the character Joan Watson who is Chinese American and works as sober companion for drug addicts. Later it is found that she was a surgeon but with the death of a person on the operating table due to her mistake, she stopped practising and started working as a sober companion.

One of the main points that I noted, is the English language and the British accent that is spoken by Sherlock in the series. As for British accent that can be understood with the help of subtitles but some of the English words used by Sherlock are of high level for the people not having English as primary language though other characters accent is American. But when it is compared to the British crime TV series ‘Sherlock’ then, Elementary is much easier to understand because being a British TV series and having the English fluency of Benedict Cumberbatch starring as Sherlock Holmes, makes it much difficult to understand.

All the stories of TV series ‘Sherlock’ is based on the novel of Sir Doyle with little change whereas the TV series ‘Elementary’ have great detective cases of its own and some are taken from the novel with the huge change in the story. The rival of Sherlock Holmes with Moriarty can be seen in both of the series. Along with this, you can also see the comparison between Joan Watson and Irene Adler in the series ‘Elementary’.

The TV series ‘Elementary’ consists seven seasons with 22- 23 episodes for first six seasons and 13 episodes for last season.

If you are about to watch any TV series then I will suggest, you watch ‘Elementary’ during the lockdown of COVID-19 pandemic if you like crime detective series.