John Rogers: Your occasional reminder that SHERLOCK was a hobby and ELEMENTARY was a proper piece of work. Also, that’s the amazing Zoë Keating as the incidental music, which I’d forgotten.

ELEMENTARY has dropped on Hulu (was it there before and I hadn’t seen it?) and as I’m busted with COVID, I’m indulging. The pilot’s a masterclass, the show’s an A+ example of procedural writing, balancing the serialization and B plots.

This is what streaming stole from us. Anyway, you could do worse as a young writer, seeing as procedurals are coming back, than to study the classics.

Your occasional reminder that SHERLOCK was a hobby and ELEMENTARY was a proper piece of work. Also, that’s the amazing Zoë Keating as the incidental music, which I’d forgotten.

Sherlock is the more bombastic Holmes novels, Elementary is the short stories.

Sherlock has a healthy dose of The Doctor as a sociopath.

It is very Moffat for both good and bad, and I say that as a fan.

Have you seen the @hbomberguy.bsky.social video on Sherlock? It's almost 2 hours long and yet I've watched it numerous times (it got me to watch Elementary and I'm forever grateful).

Now I have. It’s amazing how much time people will spend tearing down something they hate. Well done, hbomberguy.

Hbomberguy at least puts the work in and does critical analysis, as opposed to just screaming at the things or... well, okay, he still makes jokes.

I disagree. Sherlock turned into a bunch of plot lines that never paid off and random info dumped at the end. Elementary tries to drip feed you a little more info as Holmes finds it, so you can try and figure it out yourself. It has a logical line of how he found the answer (in most eps)

The show took a huge nose-dive for me after the whole "Moriarty and Sherlock meet at the pool" scene

Also, Elementary has the guy from Hackers, and it's awesome to see him have a leading role, because he plays a modern Holmes great

In both Sherlock and Doctor Who, I believe you can spot the exact moment when attempting to work on both shows simultaneously turned Moffat’s brain into suet.

Moffat is great when he's got someone to tell him "You need to wrap this up in 2 eps, max"

I think he even does decent work without heavy handed editorial supervision but he absolutely needs to be getting 8 hours of sleep a night consistently— taking over a show that was built on top of RTD’s willingness to work 20 hour days in perpetuity had some downsides for him. 😭

Zoe's music is great! I didn't know she did that show. She's here on Bluesky, too.

I was so ready to hate ELEMENTARY when I first heard about it, but I was won over. The final episodes of season 1 are brilliant. (It's also the only action show I've seen where a character who gets knocked out a few times suffers ill-effects from it.)

They did that on Bones too, and turned what looked like a jokey stunt episode (having Stewie from the Family Guy as a guest character) have actual meaning.

Top to bottom, from structure of season to individual shows always advancing the world a bit, to the context revolving from place to place and face to face, and the cast was just right, from the core four to all the guests who threw heat across and through seasons. (I just rewatched it fwiw)

I've been slowly working my way through a rewatch (up to s6 now), and it's exactly as good as I remember.

I'm *very* sorry that you've got the Rona, hoping you have leeway for extended hardcore rest, and feeling casually vindicated to find that you are also an ELEMENTARY supremacist.

I am in fact in the middle of a pilot rewrite with a short deadline, but thankfully I seem to be on the other side of this.

You don't know me from a fence post, and I'm sure you have Good Advice and caring people on your side, but juuuust in case, let me be a tiny voice encouraging "Rest as much as you can, even if your initial course feels like no big deal." One of the best defenses against long-term effects. Good luck!

(Or: LOL, artists and writers cannot catch a break, eh? "As much as you possibly can" represents RADICALLY different amounts of rest for different people, inevitably. I wish it were not so, and I'm glad you're feeling better.)

Oh I’ve taken an unreasonable amount of naps.

😀GOOD! Take it from someone who has watched people close to her get completely wrecked by long COVID: Every shred of real rest that you can scrape together for the next few months is not only reasonable but a heroic and meaningful effort.

Then where does Psych place then?

There was a weird SF spinoff from Elementary - Limitless the TV series which was full of all the kind of stuff they couldn't get away with on Elementary (including a tribute to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.) A show that was so much fun it could only last one season.

ELEMENTARY is running on Start network OTA two eps / day, 7 days / week. On the third repeat of all seasons now and we're still catching things we missed.

Zoe is on her! She is lovely.

Thanks for the heads up!

Welcome!!

I have a lot more time for ELEMENTARY's interpretation of Holmes as overly sensitive theatre kid than for SHERLOCK's super-observant sociopath. But ELEMENTARY has so much more than just the best interpretation of Holmes. The character arcs, both of the leads individually & their relationship!

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