My Comfort Sherlock Holmes

 It's easy not to expect much from a TV Sherlock Holmes. The medium has given us such random incarnations of the great detective -- actors like Roger Moore, Tom Baker, Matt Frewer, and James D'Arcy make the casting choices seem practically random. And once cast, who knows what direction the script and director will take them.

So when Watson on CBS announced Sherlock Holmes was returning from Reichenbach Falls yet again, to be played by Robert Carlyle, most famous in my mind for The Full Monty from the showrunner who gave us Elementary, well, let's just say I was not optimistic. (Apologies, Elementary fans, but I still just don't get it.)

Sherlock Holmes turned up in Watson's kitchen in the middle of the night, making a sandwich, just as casually as you please. No disguise as an old book dealer. No air-gun worries. Just "My dear Watson . . . I don't suppose you have any horse radish."

He offers Watson the chance to hit him for faking his death, but Morris Chestnut's Watson is no Martin Freeman Watson. This Watson goes in for the hug. And then lets Holmes finish making his sandwich.

"I was hoping we could start small," Holmes starts when asked about how he survived and what he was up to. There is a tenderness between the two. Not ship-worthy, but that of real friendship. Holmes admits to fearing he's hurt their friendship, and then does start small with that simplest of questions, "How was your day?"

And he had me.

Robert Carlyle's Sherlock Holmes was kind and gentle, with that sort of wisdom we expect from a aging sage. The episode that follows, then, is Watson telling Holmes about his day, and the latest medical mystery. The two talk all night, until the sun rises the next day, as one would expect of two close friends so long apart. It reminded me of the set-up for Lee Shackleford's play, Holmes and Watson, where the two friends spend their first night together post-Reichenbach talking it out. But that was more dramatic, not this quiet, not this comfortable.

I was surprised at how much I loved this new Sherlock Holmes. No diagnosable personality disorders, no over-dramatic quirks. Just that sage old friend you'd love to have in your life. Like those Holmeses from a day when genius detectives didn't have to have some personal defects to counterbalance their superior brains for the more mundane minds. From a day when we trusted our experts, and desperate influencers weren't trying to puff up their own opinions by tearing down the learned.

In a time when things are as messy as they've ever been, Robert Carlyle brought us a "comfort Sherlock." The kind of Sherlock Holmes that I'd love to find in my kitchen making a sandwich some evening after having a pleasant evening with a date who was still asleep back in the bedroom. (Okay, so that date part is just the icing on the Watson cake.)  I was really thinking this Watson might leave his current love interest and start chasing cases with Sherlock Holmes, but no! This Holmes lets Watson get on with his life . . . even if Holmes does suggest that Mary Morstan and John Watson might really be the couple that should be togther.

I happy with this new Sherlock Holmes. And his secret mission to deal with that very real problem we have with the uber-rich right now. I'm looking forward to his eventual return.