Jonny Lee Miller is not Benedict Cumberbatch. Get over it. Lucy Liu is not Martin Freeman, but that is obvious. The United States is not Great Britain. Have we got this all straight? Good. I'm not being pedantic, I had to convince myself of this, too.
Miller and Liu have good chemistry, that much is obvious from the very first scene that they have together and holds throughout the whole show. Even more surprising was the quality of the show. I am a fan of Ms. Liu and knew what to expect from her and was pleasantly surprised that she did even better. But, Miller was pretty much an unknown to me. I saw him in that movie, Hackers, what, like twenty years ago? Mostly I remember something about him being an item with, maybe even married to, Angelina Jolie. To say I was pleasantly surprised is almost an understatement. I really liked the way he played Holmes. He wasn't as manic as Cumberbatch's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes or as cocky as Downey's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. He's confident for sure but also aware of his need even dependance on Watson.
What makes this show different from it's British counterpart is the similarity to police procedurals that we are already used to. And by we, I mean me. At the end of the episode I felt this show had more akin with Castle than it did with Sherlock. It's more than just the change of location and working amicably with the police (at least at this point in the series), it's the pacing. At times I could almost believe that I was watching CSI: Sherlock.
I don't know enough of the Sherlock Holmes canon to know if this story was based on any of those by Doyle. That is one aspect of the Sherlock series that I like - that they make an effort to tell a version of original tales. Well, its not like I only like one aspect of Sherlock, I quite like the whole show. And with only one episode to base it on so far, I quite like Elementary as well.
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