Benedict Cumberbatch & Jonny Lee Miller

Ever since it was announced that an American television station would be making their own version of a Sherlock Holmes set in modern times, called Elementary, it has been ridiculed and panned for being unoriginal and a pale imitation of the BBC series Sherlock.

That ridicule grew ten times larger when it was announced that the Watson to the American produced Holmes would be an Asian woman named Joan. These are the kinds of stories tabloid editors have wet dreams about, and its really real.

Now Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch has gotten on the bandwagon, giving the CBS series some grief when talking to Shortlist magazine. Apparently Cumberbatch also was able to get a hold of a copy of the pilot script as well:

“I got hold of the pilot script just to check it out. I don’t know, we’ll see. I think there’s room for us both to coexist. I don’t feel threatened by it and I wish him the best, which is as diplomatic as I can be.”

“Him” would be British actor Johnny Miller, who will play the role of Sherlock Holmes in Elementary and also starred alongside Cumberbatch in a National Theater adaption of M’ Frankenstein last year. After discussing the role by phone with Miller, Cumberbatch speculated on why Miller might have taken the role:

“When you get used to a certain standard of living and they waft a pay cheque at you, what are you going to do? I think Jonny was like, ‘Mate, I’ve got the f****** mountain to climb here, you’ve got nothing to fear’.”

Cumberbatch also thought little of the idea of making Watson a woman in the American Sherlock Holmes series as he stated it might create sexual tension between Holmes and Watson as well as kill the two male dynamic that has been there since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle originally was writing the pair.

Elementary will be able to be seen in America on the 27th of September on CBS networks. The series will be shown sometime in the future in the UK on Sky Living, but no word yet on any kind of set fate for the series to begin broadcasting.

(Via The Telegraph)

Thomas Spychalski

Besides co-editing and writing for Cult Britannia with Christian, Thomas Spychalski has written for sister site Kasterborous and various Doctor Who fanzines and websites since 2006, as well as being featured in kasterborous’ first book Ultimate Regeneration.
Tom also writes a column called Fish Out of Water for a newspaper out of Texas in the states, as well as being the editor/owner of the up and coming paranormal website News From The Spirit World.
Future plans include fiction, a long term book project on the Amityville Horror and working on an informational website for storm phobics.