‘Elementary’
So, The ‘American Sherlock Holmes’ is airing over here soon. I won’t tell you what channel it’s airing on, for fear you might watch the thing. American audiences have already seen a few episodes and judging from its Metacritic score it hasn’t been eviscerated. I find this really strange as there has been a lot of back and forth about how the makers are terrible people for turning Watson into an Asian-American woman. This is not a knock on anyone’s acting skills, but rather an attack on the perceived need to insert a ‘will they, won’t they’ sidestory into a classic that many, including myself, would say requires extremely careful stepping when adapted. The show’s very existence is also a non-acknowledgement to the fact that there is already a stellar Sherlock Holmes adaption made in the UK. This has gotten me thinking on the topic of ‘American Remakes’; why aren’t our shows good enough without being Amercianised and tampered with? I mean, the Anglo-Irish media didn’t feel the need to set Friends in London or anything, so why are our critically acclaimed shows butchered in transit?
