Jonny Lee Miller: Elementary does Sherlock right as series surprises as one of the best on TV The set-up and the cast had me fearing the show would be wholly annoying, but this Sherlock revamp somehow works Share 181 Email Emma Brockes guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 October 2012 15.31 EDT (GUARDIAN)

Seeing the posters around New York had been vaguely depressing: Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Watson in the new CBS series Elementary. The casting seemed obnoxious, not just for Watson-as-a-lady but for Miller, an actor not wholly rehabilitated from his association with the Sadie Frost-Jude Law Primrose Hill mafia of the mid-1990s and with a permanently petulant look on his face.

The idea of Lucy Liu, meanwhile, riled the purists as much for Americanizing as for feminizing Watson, particularly after the recent failure of another Scotland Yard to NYPD transplant, Prime Suspect. For sheer wrongness, it'd take the BBC casting Nigel Havers in a remake of Columbo to even begin to get back at the Americans.

The set-up for the show sounded tortuous, too: Miller's Sherlock Holmes is a modern-day Londoner living in New York, fresh out of rehab and acting as a "consultant" to the NYPD. Watson is a former surgeon kicked out of medicine after a malpractice suit and employed as Holmes' full-time sponsor by his wealthy father. They live together in an adorable brownstone and skip around town solving crimes.

It shouldn't work, it really shouldn't. But on the evidence of the first two shows – the third airs on Thursday night – it is one of the best things on network TV.

READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/elementary-cbs-jonny-lee-miller

Dan Stevens | 'Downton Abbey' Christmas Special *SPOILERS*

Downton Christmas special is so good you'll vomit, says Lady Emma Fellowes

Alistair Foster, Showbusiness Correspondent This is London
Updated 12:19pm on 1 Dec 2011

It has made audiences laugh, cry and occasionally suspend belief, but one thing Downton Abbey has never been accused of is making people vomit.

But the wife of Julian Fellowes, the writer of ITV's hit period drama, has warned that the Christmas special is so good that it could do just that.

ITV will be hoping to end the BBC's dominance of Christmas viewing with its two-hour special, in which it has promised high drama as we learn the fate of Bates, the valet, who is on trial for the murder of his wife.

The cast and crew are sworn to secrecy on plot details, but Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary, told ES Magazine: "Julian's wife Emma [Lady Emma Kitchener-Fellowes] often comes on set, and she'd read all the scripts before anyone else.

She said to me, 'Just wait till you see what happens. It's so good, you'll vomit'."

Fellowes would not be drawn on his wife's comments, telling the Standard he is "always nervous of over-selling" the hugely successful programme, but mischievously added: "It does sound rather like Emma."

As well as Bates's trial, viewers are willing Lady Mary to fulfil her romance with Matthew Crawley, played by Dan Stevens. The path appears to have been cleared after Crawley's fiancée Lavinia died.

Stevens said of his character's relationship with Lady Mary: "What's fun is that we're never at the same pitch of emotion - it's one of those 'I can't quit you' relationships, a bit like Brokeback Mountain."

The pair were vamped up for their ES photoshoot, drawing inspiration from Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart's characters in the Twilight movies for the shoot at Fulham Palace.

ITV did release some sketchy details of the Christmas special today. New character Lord Hepworth (Nigel Havers) will be at the centre of a "sensational" storyline, while Lady Mary and Crawley's relationship will suffer more "twists and turns". The two-hour episode includes a Christmas ball in which the upstairs and downstairs characters come together for a night of dancing.

Those hoping for all final answers will be disappointed though, it is expected to end on a cliffhanger. The third series will screen next year.

The full interview can be read in Friday's ESMagazine