The True Melissa <[email protected]> wrote:

I mentioned yesterday that I tried out a Paramount+ show named Watson.
The premise is nuts: A modern (and black and American) John Watson,
after Holmes' death, is carrying out Holmes' last wish of running a
medical clinic specifying in exotic diseases, while Moriarty lurks
around. This is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Sherlock Holmes.

I can't help speculating that this was originally planned to be a
spinoff of House, M.D. This is a medical mystery drama with sudsy
subplots among the clinicians, so it's a similar show in many ways. Did >Watson begin as Foreman? Did the people who own the House, M.D. rights
want too much money? Did they have to yoink it back to an earlier
generation of the idea?

On House, M.D., Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) was the Watson character, not Foreman.

Making it a spinoff rather than in the style of Sherlock Holmes means unnecessarily paying royalties. The Arthur Conan Doyle estate had been demanding royalties till copyright on every story expired on the legal
theory copyright applied to the body of work and not individual stories
and novels as they were first published. Fortunately, no trial court had sustained that legal theory. Any new element introduced by a later story remained under copyright till expiration, but there was no restriction
on use of elements from any story whose copyright had expired.

He died in 1930. Anything he wrote at the very end of life expired. I
forget whether the 95th calendar year is in copyright or out of
copyright. I would argue, of course, that keeping anything in copyright
decades after death did not inspire him to write subsequent stories, but
others disagree.

That's just a guess. The show is so unHolmesian that it feels a little >jarring when they mention Moriarty. I keep forgetting this Watson is
supposed to be that Watson. My guess is probably wrong, but I prefer it
to the more likely possibility, which is that they couldn't get the show >greenlit without tacking some older material on it.

Your comments are spot on.

. . .

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The True Melissa <[email protected]> wrote:

I mentioned yesterday that I tried out a Paramount+ show named Watson.
The premise is nuts: A modern (and black and American) John Watson,
after Holmes' death, is carrying out Holmes' last wish of running a
medical clinic specifying in exotic diseases, while Moriarty lurks
around. This is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Sherlock Holmes.

I can't help speculating that this was originally planned to be a
spinoff of House, M.D. This is a medical mystery drama with sudsy
subplots among the clinicians, so it's a similar show in many ways. Did Watson begin as Foreman? Did the people who own the House, M.D. rights
want too much money? Did they have to yoink it back to an earlier
generation of the idea?

That's just a guess. The show is so unHolmesian that it feels a little jarring when they mention Moriarty. I keep forgetting this Watson is
supposed to be that Watson. My guess is probably wrong, but I prefer it
to the more likely possibility, which is that they couldn't get the show greenlit without tacking some older material on it.

EXEC A: "Sherlock Holmes has a doctor and a big bad in it. Let's use
that."
EXEC B: "Isn't there supposed to be a detective in that?"
EXEC A: "He was dead for a while. We'll set it then."

Services already have whole shelves of reboots and restarts and
reimaginings, and the studios keep making more. I think they've learned
that familiarity is a useful hook. We say we want something original,
but in fact we're more likely to tune in if it has familiar elements.

If that's so, then this will continue forever. Most shows will be
putatively based on some other cultural reference point, whether there's
any real relationship or not.

Other arts are also mining the past. Movies love franchises and sequels,
and leaks indicate that movie studios are literally making movies by
formula -- it will have certain required kinds of characters, and the
plot will hit certain beats. In publishing, it's gradually becoming a
process of massaging desired characters and tropes into something
resembling a story.

In "This Is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings," The Second
Story tracks Del Rey's damage to high fantasy. They catered to LoTR fans
by publishing only novels which used elements from it. Their press
became very popular. The genre suffered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=_BBrDhgGz1k&pp=ygUec2Vjb25kIHN0b3J5IGxvcmQgb2YgdGhlIHJpbmdz

We shouldn't let this happen to every genre in every art.

I agree with you, but I will point out that it’s not a bad show (with the exception of the episode where he murders Morarity).

Over on RAT Facebook we have found out that it’s been renewed for season
two, Sherlock Holmes will be in it and they are trying to get Lucy Liu to
guest star.

Apparently everyone has forgotten about Margaret Colin.

--
The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it is still on my list.

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Adam H. Kerman <[email protected]> wrote:

The True Melissa <[email protected]> wrote:

I mentioned yesterday that I tried out a Paramount+ show named Watson.
The premise is nuts: A modern (and black and American) John Watson,
after Holmes' death, is carrying out Holmes' last wish of running a
medical clinic specifying in exotic diseases, while Moriarty lurks
around. This is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Sherlock Holmes.

I can't help speculating that this was originally planned to be a
spinoff of House, M.D. This is a medical mystery drama with sudsy
subplots among the clinicians, so it's a similar show in many ways. Did >>Watson begin as Foreman? Did the people who own the House, M.D. rights
want too much money? Did they have to yoink it back to an earlier >>generation of the idea?

On House, M.D., Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) was the Watson >character, not Foreman.

Making it a spinoff rather than in the style of Sherlock Holmes means >unnecessarily paying royalties. The Arthur Conan Doyle estate had been >demanding royalties till copyright on every story expired on the legal
theory copyright applied to the body of work and not individual stories
and novels as they were first published. Fortunately, no trial court had >sustained that legal theory. Any new element introduced by a later story >remained under copyright till expiration, but there was no restriction
on use of elements from any story whose copyright had expired.

He died in 1930. Anything he wrote at the very end of life expired. I
forget whether the 95th calendar year is in copyright or out of
copyright. I would argue, of course, that keeping anything in copyright >decades after death did not inspire him to write subsequent stories, but >others disagree.

Ok. I looked it up. Doyle's worked were published and copyright in the
United States was secured under the 1909 Copyright Act. I have no idea
what law applied to earlier stories; A Study in Scarlet was published in
1887. The copyright duration applied to publication (the current act
applies to original works of authorship that are "fixed in a tangible
form of expression", which will happen prior to publication) or
registration, whichever came first.

For the purpose of the 1909 act, I didn't look up the copyright period
for works first published outside the United States (without simultaneous publishing in the United States) and whether the term begins with first publication or first publication in the United States. As publication is
the act of creating copies of a work for sale and distribution (without ownership of rights to the work), a foreign publication has been published
in the United States upon sale and distribution in the United States
prior to its first United States print run. I'm not sure how the first
United States sale of a foreign publication without a domestic print run
is proven, so I suspect that the term began with foreign publication.

There were two terms. The initial term of 28 years. Note that copyright registration continues to apply in the final year of the term. In the
28th year of copyright, there was mandatory renewal for a second 28
year term. If renewal did not take place during the calendar year, then
the work entered public domain with the end of the first term.

With the 1976 act coming into effective in 1978, it was still mandatory to timely renew works copyrighted under the 1909 act for the second term to prevent them from entering public domain with the expiration of the first
28 year term. With a subsequent amendment, there was automatic renewal of copyright for a second term of a work copyrighted under the 1909 act in
the 28th year of the first term after the 1992 amendment became effective.

If copyright were timely renewed under the 1909 act, subsequent legislation extended duration of the second term to 47 years in the 1976 act and 67
years in the 1998 act. Yes, that does mean renewed works that entered
the public domain with the expiration of the second 28 year term were
taken out of the public domain till the extensions in the two subsequent
acts expired.

Doyle's final story was published in 1927. It's been in public domain
after the end of 2022.

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The True Melissa <[email protected]> wrote:

[email protected] deliver unto us this message:

On House, M.D., Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) was the Watson >>character, not Foreman.

Yes he was, but this character isn't really Dr. John Watson. He's just a >doctor identifying exotic diseases, named John Watson to tack the Holmes >stuff on.

I speculated Foreman because Foreman was already a black man and already
had some trouble in his distant past. The other two ducklings could also
have worked for such a show, but I think Wilson would be too old now
(and was an oncologist anyway).

House said several times that Foreman was on his team because, as a
yout', he was a juvenile delinquent and needed him to commit various
illegal acts like breaking into patients' homes looking for evidence.

On House, M.D., therefore, he was a former Baker Street Irregular who
did good, I suppose.

I know what you are saying, that Watson was sold on the basis of being a House-like show and there are comparable characters, but I think it was
nothing more than a vehicle for Morris Chestnut. I absolutely agree that
his Watson ain't the Watson of literature.

The very idea that Holmes would somehow become so fabulously wealthy
that he could afford to endow Watson's department at the hospital
(allowing him to treat, what, two dozen patients a year) or that the
Holmes we know from literature would have any interest in doing so was laughable.

I watch it because my taste in television is almost as bad as Ian's.
It's sort of fascinating to watch for much of what it does poorly. It's
a little engaging without being actually entertaining.

It absolutely reflects Chestnut himself who has a somewhat appealing
screen presence while being largely unable to act.

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The True Melissa <[email protected]> wrote:

[email protected] deliver unto us this message:

I agree with you, but I will point out that it?s not a bad show (with the >>exception of the episode where he murders Morarity).

I haven't got to that point, but the spoiler encourages me to keep
watching. I like medical dramas, at least sometimes, and the Moriarty
arc is kind of dumb anyway.

Yes, it was. Individual cases were sometimes interesting.

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The True Melissa <[email protected]> wrote:

Verily, in article <1499190455.778527774.460378.anim8rfsk- [email protected]>, did [email protected] deliver unto us this message:

Over on RAT Facebook we have found out that it?s been renewed for season
two, Sherlock Holmes will be in it and they are trying to get Lucy Liu to
guest star.

Just to be sure... they're not trying to get her to guest star as
Sherlock, right? You never know these days.

lol no

They said who would play Sherlock, but it didn’t mean anything to me.

They didn’t say who Lucy would be

--
The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it is still on my list.

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