CBS Sets Up an Unexpectedly Fun Sherlock Holmes Take in 'Watson'

Everyone should consider the Sherlock Holmes pantheon of remakes and adaptations as a Baskin-Robins of choice. We'd all be happier; there are enough retellings to pick their favorite flavor. Don't judge someone if they prefer mint chocolate chip (or say Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular detective) over Rocky Road (obviously, Robert Downey Jr.), or even if someone goes with Rainbow Sherbet (Johnny Lee Miller). As long as we all agree that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original books are the ultimate canon, there's enough variety among the subsequent interpretations of his work for everyone to have fun.

Fun is exactly what CBS is doing with their latest endeavor into the Sherlock Holmes library. After seven seasons of Elementary, which gave us the inspired choice of Lucy Liu as Watson and Game of Thrones alum Natalie Dormer as Moriarty, the eye network re-enters the British detective game with Watson. Morris Chestnut stars as the eponymous sidekick, and the series kicks off with Holmes' alleged death, which is depicted very similarly to the final events of Doyle's The Fall. Watson watches hopelessly as Holmes and Moriarty tumble over a cliff, presumably to an untimely end.

In Watson, Holmes' dearest friend also jumps into the water and suffers a traumatic brain injury from the impact. He is fished out and gifted a world-class medical clinic when Holmes and Moriarty are assumed dead. He heads back to the United States to resume being a doctor and put solving mysteries to bed. But this is CBS, the ultimate home of the procedural, and do you know what is better than a crime procedural? A show that is a crime and medical procedural at the same time. That is procedural squared, my friends. We are solving mysteries of all kinds here, so buckle up.