Holmes Away From Holmes

Lucy Liu is definitely not Martin Freeman, but Jonny Lee Miller does his best to give Benedict Cumberbatch a run for his money

Let’s get something straight right from the start.

Elementary is not as good as Sherlock.

There. We’ve said it.

But that doesn’t mean this very 21st-century take on the literary detective is rubbish.

Jonny Lee Miller, sporting a handsome dash of designer stubble, tattoos aplenty and more chest hair than can surely be healthy, is very watchable, in a twitchy, wild-eyed way.

His slightly manic, irritable and skittish English Holmes
in New York is at least
3,000 miles away from Benedict Cumberbatch’s cool, angular London-based sleuth.

And that’s as it should be. Miller’s Holmes is edgier, and has more cracks. And he knows it.

Even his first meeting with Dr Watson strips him down – almost literally (hence us knowing all about his tattoos and how much chest hair he has) – and we hope his character will be layered up over the forthcoming episodes.

This transplanted Holmes is plying his trade in the Big Apple, the story hints, after an epic fail on his more usual side of the Pond, helping world-weary flatfoot Aidan Quinn solve dastardly crimes perpetrated by dastardly people.

We meet him as he investigates the mysterious death of a psychiatrist’s wife, and while it definitely isn’t A Study in Scarlet (or even A Study in Pink), the story is decent enough to give the modern-day consultant detective something to get his teeth into.

So, Elementary does just what it is supposed to… at least, it does until we get to Lucy Liu.

She plays Joan Watson (can you see what they did, there?) though ‘playing’ is perhaps stretching things just a little.

While the Holmes of the thoroughly modern Miller is a Gordian knot of nervous and spiky energy, Liu’s Watson is as emotive as a plank of wood… after it has had a course of botox.

Liu, for all her Hollywood credentials, simply can’t seem able to summon up an expression.

When Holmes demonstrates his deductive prowess by predicting the script of a daytime soap, she looks blank. When he callously reveals her big, personal and shameful secret, she looks blank. When he cleverly traps the perpetrator of the crime he’s detecting, she looks blank. When she’s angry with Holmes, she looks blank. When she – briefly – gets one over on him, she’s blank.

Even when she cracks a funny, her face just doesn’t budge – and before long, it goes from being a bit strange to downright annoying.

Watson is, in any adaptation, the ying to Holmes’s deductive yang – and if Liu can’t even summon up the energy to bend that face of hers into a frown, what chance does she really have of keeping up with Mr Miller?

The answer is simple: none – that is the biggest weakness of the opening episode. And it doesn’t take a genius to work that out…

THE WHAT, WHEN, WHO OF IT

WHAT’S IT CALLED?
Elementary

WHEN IS IT ON?

Tuesday, October 23, at 9pm

WHAT CHANNEL?
Sky Living

WILL I KNOW ANYONE IN IT?

Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting / Eli Stone)

Lucy Liu (Charlie’s Angels / Kill Bill Vol 1)

Aidan Quinn (What hasn’t he been in?)
WHO SHOULD WATCH IT?

Sherlock Holmes fans with no prejudices

WHO SHOULDN’T WATCH IT?

Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffatt