Robert Doherty talks about the essence of Elementary and what sets the TV series apart
Robert Doherty talks about the essence of Elementary and what sets the TV series apart
Ever since Elementary aired on TV screens the world over, the show, which stars Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, snapped up a huge fan following. While BBC’s Sherlock had its Benedict Cumberbatch and modern interpretation of the famous detective’s cases as is USP, Elementary took another approach — it turned everything that we take for granted about Sherlock Holmes, on its head. So Holmes, as played by Johnny Lee Miller, wasn’t a resident of Victorian-era London, instead, he was navigating the cityscape of present-day New York. He was also a recovering drug addict, who used his highly evolved powers of reasoning to help the NYPD solve all manners of inexplicable crimes. And then there was Homles’ trusted friend John Watson — in Elementary, the character became Joan Watson, played by Lucy Liu. Even Holmes’ arch nemesis, the evil Moriarty was also a woman (Natalie Dormer).
These genius “reversals” in a sense, have been as much responsible for Elementary’s popularity, as the painstakingly researched crime detection. And they’re the brainchild of the show’s creator Robert Doherty. In the run-up to the show’s newest (fourth) season, the Elementary team organised a conference call with Doherty, who is also the executive producer of the show. Excerpts from the conversation:
How is it working on the Elementary story line when compared to your previous work The first show that comes to mind prior to Elementary is Medium. I was there for about six years. That was a show about a psychic played by Patricia Arquette. A lot of — even though it may not sound like it — a lot of similarities in that both were, at the end of the day, crime procedurals. Both had a border line magical person at the center and helping police and at least in Medium’s case, the district attorney’s office solve crimes. So, in that respect after spending six years there seguing into Elementary was very comfortable.And before that I did a handful of science fiction shows There’s not much science fiction in Elementary and yet you could make the argument that Sherlock Holmes is the original comic book super hero.
Could you please talk about what the overall theme of this season of Elementary is going to be We want to explore family this year, Morland Holmes (Shelock’s father, played by John Noble) arrival is obviously going to have an impact on Sherlock but there’s going to be a ripple affect there for Joan as well, it’s going to be an interesting triangle for us to explore over the course of the season. But we also are taking the opportunity to explore Joan’s family a little bit as well. We met her mom in the first season. We’ve alluded to her father and step-father and a few episodes in the season we’re going to meet her step-father and discover they have a pretty complicated relationship too. You know, it’s a theme we will hit pretty hard over the first half of the season but we have hopefully a few surprises in store for the latter half. Since there’s no real (reference) for Morland Holmes’s character in the Sherlock canon or anywhere, this is the first time we’re seeing a father figure for Sherlock Holmes, what did you draw from in approaching this role I love leaning on the canon for characters like this. You know, it’s always fun to take a look at what Conan Doyle did and see how one of his characters or creations might slot into the Elementary universe. So it was for me a little frightening to create a character who’d be this important to our franchise but never appear in any of the original stories.
As far as how we attacked it as a staff, I mean it was really a matter of just taking a long hard look at the seasons that preceded this one and taking a look at our Sherlock and working backwards, you know, what kind of parent or parents could have resulted in the guy we’ve spent the last three years with. It’s still... it’s fluid I don’t think you can lock in on that person very quickly. And John’s been great about letting us to a certain extent find Morland as we go. And if anything it was, you know, it’s been very helpful to see him take possession of the role. You know, I feel like I understand Morland a bit better for having watched John portray him now for a few episodes.
Elementary Season 4 premieres on Sunday, November 22, at 10 pm on AXN
