I don’t think that’s why they made Watson female. My sense from reading about the production is that making Watson female was largely to help them legally differentiate from Sherlock.
I also think the “lack of chemistry” complaint a lot of people are making is at least in part because the producers are trying hard to not make the relationship one of those Moonlighting-y, Castle-y will they or won’t they things. Based on Lucy Liu’s and the exec producer’s comments about the character I get no sense they’re setting up for a romance.
As others have said my main problem is it mostly feels like any number of other crime procedural shows. On the other hand I think Sherlock is a significantly flawed and moderately overrated show.
IIRC, the BBC’s Sherlock miniseries explores precisely that sort of question including a very memorable scene in the first episode, “A Study in Pink”
Got around to the second ep of this. Several “twists” were painfully telegraphed and it was pretty thick in crime show cliche. Painting Sherlock as an “aware” asshole this early (I get that I am a dick, but there’s a REASON!") and humanizing him a little bit 2 episodes into a 24-episode season doesn’t bode well for development–either he’s fixed way too fast and isn’t very Holmesian anymore, or he’s not fixed every new episode despite a personal revelation at the end of the previous, very much like the overwhelming majority of the House series.
My daughter and I are still watching this weekly, and I find I am starting to look forward to it. It’s a really fun show, Sherlock and Watson have really grown on me (as has the rest of the cast), and I think the weekly cases are somewhat clever. I do have to stop myself from calling stuff though, it drives my daughter nuts, it’s all a huge reveal to her, so keep my mouth shut and enjoy it through her eyes, maybe a little more than some folks are able to do.
It’s actually one of my favorite shows. House was a mixed bag because Hugh Laurie was entertaining, but the medical “mysteries” were formulaic (it’s never Lupus!), were often resolved with information not available until the last 10 minutes, and were awfully abstract anyway. Sherlock is entertaining for the same reasons Hugh Laurie was, but there’s far more room for variety in the police procedural format. That, and the plotting is usually fairly intelligent, it doesn’t rely on the convenient confession the way the CSI franchise shows do.
I enjoy the show largely for Jonny Lee Miller, though the cases are often interesting. This week’s episode was weak. I find it terribly boring and more predictable than usual when procedural shows remove the ability to communicate.
This was also the second episode thus far where it sounded like Miller had a nasty head cold for the entire shooting schedule. Weirdly enough, I also rewatched a West Wing ep this weekend where CJ Cregg had the same issue (“The Drop In,” from season 2).
I feel like we talked about this show in another topic but you know what… this looks like the right one. Man, I loved this show right up until the end. The entire cast was a pleasure.
