While recovering from minor eye surgery (can anything involving cutting the eye really be minor?) I discovered my cable company allows me to watch network primetime television “OnDemand”. A very convenient thing for me. But I digress, the recovery as well as the convenience of modern cable viewing allowed me to view a program that I’d not yet had the chance to see, CBS’s “ELEMENTARY”.

Being more or less a Sherlock purist, I was very doubtful that I would enjoy this program, but much to my surprise I found it to be an excellent program. The fact that the lead character’s name is Sherlock Holmes is, and this is difficult to understand, not at all incident to enjoying the show.

Yes, the main characters roughly parallel the Doyle characters, it’s kind of like they are in a parallel universe where things are just a bit different. For example, Dr. Watson is a former surgeon whose ‘wound’ came in the operating room and is psychological rather than physical. She left the OR and now hires herself out as a ‘sober’ companion for recovering addicts, which the Sherlock Holmes is and becomes her client, or patient. She was hired by his father (a departure in the universe). Even Constable Gregson is present, but he’s NYPD in this series rather than Scotland Yard.

So, all that aside, you have a recovering addict with a sober ‘nanny’ doctor who, by the way, is becoming more and more interested in her patient’s ‘consulting’ activities. From the four episodes I was able to view, I found the entire premise eminently likable and found very little to complain about. Oh yes, Holmes lacks some of his unflappable confidence it seems to me, but since he’s nearly always correct or at least on the right path, it’s simply another ‘parallelism’ in this universe.

I highly recommend it and only the most staunch purist would find it unenjoyable, in my humble opinion.

I look forward to being able to view the BBC’s ‘SHERLOCK’ one day that I might make a comparison and join the fray over which is the better carrying on of the tradition.