NEW YORK— The idea for a new TV show came to Craig Sweeny as he was driving. The producer and screenwriter, thinking about how to put his own stamp on a medical series, had to pull over when a familiar figure popped into his mind: Sherlock Holmes.
Why not combine a hospital procedural with the lore of Britain’s greatest detective? It would have a medical mystery every week and also tell stories of Holmes’ good friend, Dr. John Watson. It was a mashup of two popular draws, the TV equivalent of peanut butter and jelly.
“They’re sort of each their own show-worthy premise in a way. And we’re blessed to have both. So they compete for space in a really interesting way,” says Sweeny.
So was born “Watson,” a CBS series starring Morris Chestnut as the titular character who leads a team of medical detectives set in a present-day Pittsburgh populated with Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters.
“It’s one of those blessed moments,” says Sweeny, who was well-versed with the world of Holmes after executive producing and writing for “Elementary,” a contemporary update.
“Watson” is not alone among the networks jazzing up the tried-and-true procedural. While the traditional form remains the bedrock of modern TV — think the prime-time blocks of “NCIS,” “FBI” and “Chicago Med” — new twists are emerging.
New TV recipes are heavy on the quirk
ABC’s “Doctor Odyssey” is a medical procedural aboard a luxury cruise ship and NBC’s “The Hunting Party” mashes up “The Blacklist” and “Criminal Minds.” CBS has Kathy Bates in “Matlock” playing an underestimated, retirement-age lawyer — with the twist that she’s really a hard-charging mom out for vengeance.
“There’s something really pleasurable about the self-contained, 43-minute procedural that gives you a beginning, middle and end, a little bit of a mystery and the fun of watching something get figured out,” says Jonathan Tolins, a playwright, TV writer and showrunner. “I think that the audience is so familiar with it that it does reward you if you come up with a sort of fun twist on it.”
Tolins’ own current take on the procedural is CBS’ “Elsbeth,” which takes the quirky character Elsbeth Tascioni from “The Good Wife” and plops her down in a “Columbo”-style police procedural.
Elsbeth, played by Carrie Preston, is a sleuth in bright colors and a bucket hat, blunt and unpredictable, playing off the guest star of the week.
“I said early on that I think the show works best when it feels like a CBS police procedural with Elsbeth thrown into it,” he says. “We talked about always keeping her sort of out of the center of the frame in wide shots.”
Another elevated procedural with a quirky lead character is ABC’s “High Potential,” a police show starring a genius — but this time, she’s a single mom of three who has an IQ of 160 and is played by Kaitlin Olson.
“She’s a bit of a unicorn,” says Todd Harthan, executive producer and showrunner. “You throw a unicorn into the bullpen with a bunch of detectives and they go, ‘What are we supposed to do with this colorful creature with the horn coming out of her head?’”
Streaming’s menus push traditional TV forward
Supercharging procedurals comes as streaming increasingly offers subscribers a highly curated selection of unconventional, relatively short series with big names and high production values.
“I think that, inevitably, the innovations that streaming is doing bleed into what happens in network TV and challenge what we’re doing to compete for eyeballs in a healthy way,” says Sweeny.
Procedurals are often referred to as the comfort food of TV, offering a predictable, solvable hour with a familiar cast. So strong is our attachment to the form that streaming services have also been stretching their form with shows like the also “Columbo”-like “Poker Face” on Peacock and Max’s “The Pitt,” which takes a medical show like “ER” and breaks it down into different hours of a hospital shift, like “24.”
Harthan believes the gap between the streaming and network may be closing as networks offer writers a bit of a longer leash to try different
“You’re always sort of learning and trying to glean certain things from different shows that are very different than the one you’re working on day-to-day,” Harthan says. “It’s just part of the growth of doing what we do for a living.”
Showrunners caution that mixing different elements into a show to raise the level can’t be done willy-nilly. The creator of “Watson” notes that its hero was already a doctor in the world of Sherlock Holmes, so making him head of a clinic makes sense.
“It is an exotic combo, but it’s also very organic,” says Sweeny. “Mechanically you don’t have to force anything into place. Everything’s already there.”
