Potential [definite] American "Modern day take on Sherlock Holmes" coming. Go ahead, and guess what they're calling it?

BLOT: (22 Jan 2012 - 02:33:23 AM)

Potential [definite] American "Modern day take on Sherlock Holmes" coming. Go ahead, and guess what they're calling it?

True story, I just rage quit GTA3. In a way that makes me think that I will not play it for a couple of days. My spirit is tainted with hate for the game and so I'll let that blackness eddy down and crystalline into heart-shredding shards so that when I do play again, I will spew forth vile Aklo and unmake the world around the game so that it will be left alone, unplayed, floating in the void. That'll show it.

Bit of news. Big couple of years of Sherlock buffs, no? We got the two movies helmed by Ritchie. We got a number of pastiche novels seeing reprint [can Solar Pons be far behind?]. There was a Basil Rathbone definitive set a few years back. We even have a new novel, officially commissioned by the estate and therefore about as canon as you can be—time will tell how fans take it. And there is Steven Moffat's much beloved and lauded now six-episode series, Sherlock, which brings the consulting detective and his doctor friend and assistant Watson to the modern times. It is a great show, I recommend. Not always sure the 1.5 hour format is the best but for the most part they have made it work. Now, however, there is a thing down the pipe that will either make a Sherlock (by which I mean Holmes, the detective, and Sherlock, the show) fan glee or glum, CBS is looking to make their own American version set in New York.

I say "version" because Holmes is in the public domain and so CBS is free to play with it, but there is some accusation that CBS initially approached the makers of Sherlock about doing a remake. Pub-Dom works are starting to get surrounded by the Hollywood machine and various American publishers [part of the reason Adjustment Burea seems to have been made is because it is one the PKD stories in Pub-Dom or at least has a very complicated copyright status] and I have no doubt that there are those on the creative team at CBS who simply went, "Hey, every loves Holmes. We'll give him a deerstalker and a big old pipe and we'll have spout out catch-phrases and act a little weird around the ladies" [cocaine not available for comment], but there effectively had to be those who went, "Yo, people are loving this new British show and we could seek permission to follow-suit [and apparently they did], but you know what, it's all in the public domain so there is nothing they can do to us!" And well, see the link above about the approach to do a remake to see why this show may not get off the ground.

Assuming it does, want to guess what they are going to call it? Imagine you have an audience who doesn't really know the base material, but might know a catchphrase that shows up a lot in later media despite not being actual canon? That's right, CBS is calling this Elementary.

By the way, though I linked to a couple of more "official" stories up there, I first spotted this story over at Zombies Ate My Brains which is fun blog to read if you like certain geeky shows and reading other people's take on them.

Sherlock Holmes

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: January 2012