‘Elementary’ To End After 7 Seasons
It’s nearly the end of the road for Sherlock and Joan, as CBS, along with the cast and crew of ‘Elementary‘, have decided to bring the series to a close after the upcoming 7th Season.
‘Elementary’ stars Jonny Lee Miller as detective Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as Dr Joan Watson in a modern-day retelling of the crime-solving duo who crack the NYPD’s most impossible cases. Initially, sober companion and client, Watson and Holmes’ relationship evolved into a symbiotic professional investigative partnership.
“A lot of parties came together and talked about their positions on the show – both in terms of business and in terms of creative – and we all decided that this was an opportune time to say goodbye to a show that has been very, very good to us,” commented CBS Entertainment President Kelly Kahl to Deadline.
The detective drama has been a solid show for CBS over the years. Whilst the later seasons haven’t exactly set the ratings on fire in it’s native America, CBS owns the show, and it sells extremely well for them around the world. The decision to end the series came only a few weeks after the renewal for a 13-episode 7th Season, allowing the writers time to craft a fitting end to the show.
“Rob set out to tell a story, and it feels like he has accomplished what he had set out to do,” adds exec producer Carl Beverly. “The actors, the crew and the cast feel that way, and we feel that. So are grateful and celebrating what we had and looking forward to the future.”
Whilst we’ll be sorry to see ‘Elementary’ go, 7 Seasons and 154 episodes is a solid run. It would appear that it was a mutual decision between creator Rob Doherty, the crew and CBS, along with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu. The actor’s contracts were up for renewal, meaning they would have had to commit to more seasons or bring things to an end, and they chose the latter. 7 years is a long time to play one character, and Liu has seemed eager to spend more time behind the camera recently, having directed multiple episodes of ‘Elementary’ and stepping behind the lens for the last season of ‘Luke Cage’. Jonny Lee Miller also took up directing on the series this year, along with reprising his role as Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson in ‘T2 Trainspotting’ last year. He is next due to star in an adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi novelette ‘Nine Lives’ with Common.
‘Elementary‘ is broadcast on Sky Witness in the UK with Season 7 due to air in 2019.
2 comments
Yeah, it’s perfectly understandable that everyone involved wants to move on to other projects. After all, these actors have had pretty active careers before this show and at least Ms. Liu probably wants to get in a few more roles before casting agents deem her too old for TV / movies. (Male actors don’t have this problem, but female ones still do. People like Amanda Tapping, who still gets roles in middle age are the rare exception. And even with her, she had to produce her own show (Sanctuary) to get a lead actress job again after her long career on the Stargate franchise.)
I mean, this isn’t like with long-runners like Supernatural or Murdoch Mysteries, where the main cast were relative nobodies before or had been acting in daytime soaps, and thus are probably just grateful that they’ve managed to get a role that’s been providing them with a steady paycheck for well over 10 years now.
(I don’t mean those actors are untalented – just that they had no foot in the movie industry and have no real chance of getting in there now, if their show ends. And even among male actors it is rare for someone who has been the “face” of a show for many years to be cast as the lead of another show, because he’ll always be associated with the first character for the viewers. The only genre actors I can think of who got this kind of role twice are Richard Dean Anderson, David Boreaz and Nathan Fillion.)
Good thing that everyone knows about the show’s ending in advance. That way they can write a proper finale – nothing worse than cancelling a show on a cliff-hanger. (Including for the money people who made this stupid decision. If people know a show ends on a cliff-hanger, they’re much less likely to recommend it to people who haven’t seen it yet, thus hurting DVD sales and rerun ratings.)
Though I actually thought the move and open ending of the last season would have worked perfectly well as a satisfying ending for this series. (I always liked that the writers of this show were prepared for sudden cancellation and didn’t write big cliff-hangers into their season finales, like a lot of shows do.)
I agree I have loved watching this its was great pairing lucy liu and jon they had a wonderful rapport and they will be missed but yes all things must come to an end its had a good run but it must go out with a bang like either Watson gets an offer of a new job elsewhere which she takes and sherlock cant cope so he goes back to drugs
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