Former surgeon Jane Watson now works as a sober companion, providing one-on-one assistance to newly recovering addicts. She's about to find her latest client a particularly challenging one.
This is not because Sherlock Holmes seems at any particular risk of sliding back into his drug dependency, but because he's as irascible and impatient as he is brilliant and driven. Holmes has found work as a consulting detective for the homicide division of the New York Police, assisting them with particularly challenging and impenetrable cases. Watson therefore finds herself being dragged along to crime scene after crime scene ... and to her surprise, she also finds she has both aptitude and passion for the work Holmes does.
Elementary came out around the same time as the BBC's (IMO, vastly overrated) Sherlock, and much like that show, it transplants Holmes and Watson to the modern era, though it adopts a rather edgier aesthetic with Holmes's past drug issues and proclivity for sexual frankness. It also - at least in this first season - delivers more interesting and coherent cases, and a far more satisfying Moriarty. Though amusingly, the least satisfying Moriarty of all is probably the original: he appears in only two stories, and Watson never even meets him!
Anchored by two fine leads and a solid supporting cast, season one of Elementary delivers solid 'mystery of the week' adventures. Refreshingly, despite its Watson being female, it also avoids any hint of romance between the two main characters, allowing them instead to simply care for each other as friends and colleagues.
Hopefully season two will live up to this fine opening effort.
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