Guest Essay: Merrill Barr explains why a Canadian television show, Flashpoint, was an American television game-changer.

The Canadian Cop Show That Broke American Television

by Merrill Barr

I don’t hold it against you if you've never heard of Flashpoint. It’s a show that has flown under the radar to American audiences since its beginning. Constantly being shifted around in time slots and networks for the last five years makes it difficult to maintain a regular audience. But there’s a reason the show should matter to you. While its end draws near (the series finale airs in only a few weeks on American television), its legacy to the American television business model will stand the test of time.

God help me, I'm actually enjoying Elementary...

Despite my best efforts to stay above the fray, I must now admit that I'm actually becoming a fan of CBS's new 'Sherlock Holmes in New York' crime drama Elementary.  I know I'm supposed to take pot-shots at the show and blab about how it's a shameless attempt to cash in on the success of BBC's Sherlock.  But the show has, if anything, gone out of its way to differentiate itself from the brooding series that turned Benedict Cumberbatch into a mega-star/sex-symbol.  I remarked back when the first extended trailer appeared that the show felt less like a riff on Sherlock and more like a rip-off of Tony Shalhoub's Monk.  That's still the case, but it's quickly become an arguably superior version of the briefly great but mostly terrible USA comedy.  Loyal viewers will recall that the show's first two seasons were delightful until the writers/producers amped up the farce and started treating Monk like a man-child who was completely unfamiliar with how the outside world actually functions.  The key to the show's appeal is two things it shares with the title character: a genuine intelligence and a general lack of unnecessary sentiment.

CBS's Elementary gets a trailer. It's not Sherlock, it's Monk!

By familiar, I don't mean that it looks like a carbon-copy of the BBC modern day Sherlock Holmes drama Sherlock.  The good news is that this looks and feels quite different from the currently airing series.  The bad news is that everything about this feels like a concerted effort to water-down the original and make it 'more palpable' to alleged audience sensibilities.  The tinkering seems primarily intended to make Johnny Lee Miller's Holmes more 'sympathetic'.  This Holmes actually gives a damn about the dastardly doings that villains do, rather than treating the 'great game' as just that.  He lashes out at suspects and expresses regret at having to witness violence.  And of course, because Watson is now played by a woman, Lucy Lu is seen looking away at the gore, because all women are inherently squeamish.  The core difference between the two shows appears to be an attempt to make Jonny Lee Miller's Holmes less cold, clinical, and stand off-ish than Benedict Cumberbatch.  In short, CBS is trying for a more 'relatable' Sherlock Holmes.