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Sherlock’s sidekick takes top billing in ‘Watson’ on CBS
‘WATSON’ ON CBS TELEVISION
Fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. John Watson are enduring, popular figures as the result of the prolific work of British writer and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Going back to 1922 when John Barrymore played the titular role in “Sherlock Holmes” to a more recent portrayal of the famous sleuth by Benedict Cumberbatch in “Sherlock,” the character often assisting Scotland Yard has been in so many movies and TV shows that it is hard to keep track.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were characters from the Victorian era, which makes sense because Arthur Conan Doyle started writing about them in the late 19th century. Recent adaptations of his works have transported them to the modern era.
Interestingly enough, CBS brought the characters to contemporary times last decade with “Elementary,” a popular series in which Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) left London for New York after being in rehab.
Holmes’ father made him live with a sober companion, Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), a former surgeon who quit after losing one of her patients. Paired together, they began consulting with the NYPD to solve difficult cases.
CBS is now back with another take on the famous detective’s associate in the series simply titled “Watson,” where the good doctor is a contemporary figure who witnesses his friend, in a battle with archenemy Moriarty, taking a plunge into a steep waterfall as the result of the fight.
Throwing caution to the wind, Dr. John Watson (Morris Chestnut) nosedives into the fall to attempt a rescue, only to end up hospitalized for what his loyal associate Shinwell Johnson (Ritchie Coster) later tells him was a traumatic head injury.
Sherlock Holmes did not survive, leaving his estate to Watson so that he could create the Holmes Clinic Diagnostic Medicine in the city of Pittsburgh six months after recovering his memory.
With the help of his trusty aide Shinwell, Watson hires a quirky crew of medics to handle obscure cases, where each episode, at least in the beginning, focuses on the rare affliction of one patient.
The central cast members are Eve Harlow’s neurologist Ingrid Derian, Inga Schlingmann’s immunology specialist Sasha Lubbock, and Peter Mark Kendall pulling double-duty as twin infectious disease experts Stephens Croft and Adam Croft.
The Croft brothers are identical twins, of course, but their personalities diverge in a major way. One is very loquacious. The other seems to be emotionally stunted, which fits for Stephens since he doesn’t even like the way some pronounce his given name.
Serving in the role of the clinic’s medical director is Watson’s ex-wife Mary Morstan (Rochelle Aytes), who doesn’t let divorce get in the way of providing some balance to the operation by tempering Watson’s more unorthodox methods.
Not to be left out is Randall Park’s Moriarty, who appears at the beginning in the tussle with Sherlock at the Swiss waterfall. Will this criminal mastermind and Sherlock’s archrival suddenly reemerge from the dead, like Patrick Duffy’s Bobby Ewing in the “Dallas” series?
In the first episode, a pregnant woman unable to sleep and fearing for her life is diagnosed with Fatal Familial Insomnia, a rare genetic condition that causes sleeping difficulties, memory loss, and involuntary muscle twitching. The condition worsens over time, and it’s life threatening.
In another episode, we learn that Foreign Accent Syndrome, a brain-related condition that affects your ability to make sounds correctly, is a legitimate medical condition that might be treatable.
During a virtual CBS press tour, Morris Chestnut wanted everyone to know that “all the medicine on this show is real” and it “has been vetted by numerous medical professionals.” Who’s going to challenge an episode delving into a diagnosis so rare that maybe your family physician doesn’t even know it?
Show creator and writer Craig Sweeny made it known that in writing a medical procedural he was writing “about cases at the very edge of human knowledge,” while also observing that the show was designed to allow you to “learn a little bit more about yourself and your genes.”
What the series has going for it is the charisma of Morris Chestnut, which is evident not just in the show but when he explained his previous roles always played it straight as a doctor, but here he’s a “doctor and detective in addition to being in the whole Sherlock mythology.”
As a medical show, “Watson” leans into its investigative streak, because this modern version of one of history’s greatest fictional detectives turns his attention from solving crimes to solving medical mysteries.
The show’s conceit of unwinding mysteries rather than crimefighting is not entirely satisfactory as mixing Sherlock mythology with complex medical obscurities does not seem like it will prove to be a winning formula over the long haul.
On the plus side for all it’s worth, viewers will learn a few things about incomprehensible medical conditions that may well elude even some practitioners. However, would this knowledge even be useful for a trivia contest?
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
