Mile
Zero

The difficulty in making a Sherlock Holmes adaption for American television is that we've already got three or four of them. Hyper-observant detectives are a dime a dozen, from The Mentalist to Monk. Arguably, Psych is just Holmes and his deductive skills with an added dose of arrested development (and I say that as someone who enjoys Psych at its fluffiest). Dule Hill's Gus even serves as a Watson, but reduced to a pharmeceutical rep instead of a doctor to match his detective friend's lack of ambition. The BBC's Sherlock owes Psych a debt for the visual style illustrating the deductive process, although I doubt they'd ever admit it.

I don't envy the people who decided, after the British version aired to wide acclaim, to make another Sherlock Holmes show. That's some tough competition. But I've been watching the first season of Elementary, and I have to say I'm enjoying it. The cast is growing on me, I like the lack of romantic angst, and the infrequent references to the original stories (inasmuch as I can catch them, not being a die-hard fan) are often worth a chuckle.

The biggest problem that Elementary faces is Watson — specifically, figuring out what she's supposed to bring to the team. As played by Lucy Liu, Joan Watson is an ex-surgeon who initially serves as Sherlock's live-in addiction counselor. With the terms of that job running out, partway through the first season, Sherlock offers her a position being groomed as a detective-in-training: someone who can take on his methods and become an equal part of the sleuthing consultancy.

Unfortunately, this is where the show's writers seem to have run out of steam. They know where they want this Watson to end up, and they've told us about it repeatedly, but they don't know how to get her there. She's not shown doing much studying, as such, and Holmes mentions that she doesn't read his research. As a result, Liu's Watson ends up either solving minor b-plot mysteries, dropping medical clues, or providing a convenient anchor toward which Sherlock can toss exposition. It's possible she's learning by osmosis, but this hardly provides a reason why we should care about her character arc.

It's interesting to see how the BBC Sherlock has taken a different tack with its version of the character. The British Watson, played by Martin Freeman, leans heavily on the actor's likeability and finely-tuned air of irritation to create a companion who partners with Sherlock for the adrenaline rush of it. Freeman's Watson is muscle and heart: he humanizes Sherlock and provides support. Ultimately, the relationship between the pair on the BBC show is one of friends. They enjoy going on adventures together. They have a similar restlessness. But Sherlock doesn't need Watson to solve crimes. When the show begins, he's doing relatively fine without him, although Watson's blogging certainly helps build Sherlock's reputation as a detective.

Joan Watson, on the other hand, is interested in being Sherlock — or, at least, being a consulting detective armed with his deductive methods. And in contrast to the Cumberbatch version, Jonny Lee Miller's Holmes is not nearly as self-sufficient. He's abrasive without being charming, dependent on his father for income, and recovering from a drug problem that destroyed his ability to work. Lance Mannion has commented that this weakens Holmes, but I'm not sure that I agree. Given that the original Holmes was a bit of a Mary Sue (a great observer, master of disguise, amateur boxer and stick-fighter, chemist, polyglot, and former spy) I don't miss seeing a version of the character that's less omni-capable.

Elementary wisely forgoes flashy zoom cuts to "show" how Sherlock examines a scene. They don't seem to have developed much of a substitute, unfortunately, so too often the show falls back on simply having characters explain the mystery to us. But I think this is in part because the mysteries are honestly second priority to where Elementary actually wants to focus: on the relationship between Holmes and Watson, with two possibilities for its ultimate outcome. On the one hand, it's hinted that this version of the great detective is really the result of two people working together — that Holmes and Watson together are the equivalent of the BBC Sherlock. Alternately, we're watching the origin story for a second Sherlock embodied in Joan Watson: one that can avoid the mistakes of drug abuse and arrogance, and benefit from her richer life experience as a surgeon.

The danger in speculating about a TV show this way, I've found, is the tendency to write about the show you wish you were watching, not the one that's actually onscreen. It's an easy mistake to make. I remember being mystified by John Rogers' glowing commentary on Jericho, which does not at all resemble the mediocre show that aired under that name, until I realized that really we weren't watching the same program — that the version Rogers was watching was being filtered through all the cool stuff he could have done with its premise.

And so it may be with Elementary. I'm only three-quarters through the first season, and even I will admit that it's uneven at best. It's possible I'm just a sucker for training montages. But the idea that Watson is not just a point of view character or a sounding post, but just the latest heir to a legacy of nigh-uncanny sleuthing... I have to admit, that's like catnip to me. I've got high hopes for it in the second season, and I'd put up with a lot of flexibility around the source material to watch it happen.

It's been a beautiful summer, even by Seattle standards, and Belle and I have gotten at least some good out of it. We've been camping, traveling, and lately we even broke out the grill. Take that, state-wide burn ban!

Indoors, of course, a lot of the broadcast TV we watch takes the summer off. We've been picking up a few shows via Netflix and Amazon instead. I'm not quite ready to write off our TiVo yet, but I'm impressed with the choices we've had.

Orange is the New Black

Surprisingly good. Shockingly good, even. There's none of the lazy writing and faux-transgressiveness that marked Jenji Kohan's previous show, Weeds. It's got a rich cast of characters without feeling contrived, it's funny without going broad, and it's comfortable mining a deep vein of dark humor from its setting. There have been a few comparisons between this and The Wire. Orange is the New Black isn't quite that good--what is?--but it's not an inapt pairing. Like its predecessor, Orange features a diverse cast filled with actors of color. Both shows also lack marquee names (but feature stellar performances from little-known actors). And of course, the subject material in both cases is fascinating in and of itself.

Beyond the confines of the show, it's interesting to see Netflix so clearly taking a page from HBO's book. Lots of networks have halo shows--it's only thanks to Mad Men that I can differentiate between AMC and A&E--but it was really HBO that realized shows were "stickier" than movies. And unlike HBO, Netflix doesn't force you to haggle with your local cable overlords. If they can put out more material at this quality level, their constant battles over licensing big film titles for streaming look a lot less troubling. I could definitely see keeping a Netflix subscription just for a couple of shows like this.

Alphas

A show that never really found an audience on the SciFi channel, Alphas folded after a couple of seasons, and Amazon snagged it as one of their early exclusives. It's not groundbreaking television: the special effects are decidedly bargain-basement, the writers can't decide if they want to steal from Heroes or X-Men, and the direction ranges from competent to not terrible. It's a good summer show, though, with a more thoughtful core than either of its inspirations would lead you to believe.

Alphas has three things going for it. The first is David Strathairn, an actor who is way too good to be doing a superhero show on basic cable. The second is a genuine rapport between the actors, who really sell the workplace chemistry--especially between Gary, the autistic electro-telepath and Bill, the temperamental bruiser. Finally, Alphas does manage a single clever twist on its formula: the idea that its superpowers are basically neuroses, for which most of the cast are in therapy (if nothing else, this is a wry joke at the expense of the Xavier Academy for Gifted Youth). I'm not sure it ever really embraces that fully--there hasn't been a single hero-on-a-couch scene that I remember--but it does make me feel better about my own psychological tics.

The Fall

The Fall doesn't try to hide its villain: you'll know whodunnit by the end of the first episode. Instead, it serves as a kind of character study for its chilly detective, Stella Gibson, played by Gillian Anderson. In many ways it reminds me of the BBC's prototypical female detective drama, Prime Suspect: Gibson spends as much time fighting a sexist bureaucracy as she does hunting the actual murderer.

When it's good, The Fall is very good, but it takes its time getting there. It's odd that, for a season that's only six episodes long, so much of it feels like padding. But I think part of that comes down to the delivery method. Streaming (and DVD, as well) makes it easy to burn through a show in a matter of hours. That's great for hook-driven puzzlers like Fringe or monster-of-the-week shows like Doctor Who, but it might not work so well for atmosphere-driven dramas.

It makes me wonder if we'll see a change in how people write narratives as streaming TV-on-demand becomes more common. Some people consider the non-Netflix Arrested Development to be designed for obsessive DVD rewatching. Is streaming different? More social? More portable?