(CBS)
It’s elementary. All things must end sometime and now, the end is in sight for the Elementary TV show. It’s been announced that there won’t be an eighth season but, on the positive side, a seventh season of 13 episodes will wrap up the crime drama. The final year will bring the show’s tally to 154 episodes.
Airing on the CBS television network, Elementary follows detective Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Doctor Joan Watson (Lucy Liu). This modern-day adaptation of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle detective stories features some new spins on the classic crime-solving duo. Instead of assisting Scotland Yard, they crack New York City’s toughest cases. A former surgeon who lost a patient, as well as her license to practice, Watson began as Sherlock’s sober companion. Eventually, their relationship evolved into an investigative partnership. The crime drama also stars Aidan Quinn as Captain Thomas Gregson and Jon Michael Hill as Detective Marcus Bell.
According to Deadline, when Elementary was renewed for a seventh season, it was decided that those episodes would also end the show. Why? It’s surely no coincidence that Liu and Miller’s contracts would have had to be renegotiated. The show’s network ratings have also continued to dwindle but the series is a lucrative money-maker in syndication and in international markets.
“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,” CBS Entertainment President Kelly Kahl said.
Added executive producer Carl Beverly, “[Series creator Rob Doherty] set out to tell a story, and it feels like he has accomplished what he had set out to do. 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.”
SPOILER ALERT The cast and crew had been unsure if they would get a seventh-year renewal so they’d already shot the sixth season finale as an appropriate end for the series. While the sixth season finale left our heroes in London, they will be returning to New York early in season seven. Holmes nemesis Odin Reichenbach, to be played by James Frein, will show up in episode five.
There will also be a time jump in the seventh season. Doherty said, “Something that I knew I wanted to do was move forward in time a bit with the characters by the very end… (In the books,) there was a period when Sherlock and Watson were not together, they went down very different paths, and their lives were very different from having been apart. We felt that would be appropriate for our show. A lot was season seven working towards that, how can we tell a larger story that would allow us to devise a finale that sets in not so distant future.”
CBS has not announced a premiere date for season seven but it will surely air sometime in 2019. Season six aired over the summer of 2018, ending in early September.
What do you think? Are you a fan of the Elementary TV show? Are you sorry that there won’t be an eighth season or, is season seven the right time to end the show?
On Kelly Kahl’s statement about shows with over 150 episodes “serving the network very well”: It’s remarkable that “Elementary” survived as long as it did with its “middle-of-the-pack” viewership when it started out, and that viewership only got lower and lower each year. It’s because “Elementary” got the Super Bowl XLVII lead-off slot during its first year (you know, the one where there was a half-hour delay because of a blackout at the Superdome?). Later, “Elementary” survived a move to the Sunday-at-10 timeslot during seasons four and five, and then it went to Mondays for year six, and it ended-up… Read more »
I think they should continue with more seasons. A good show. Action without violence and excellent story plots!
I love Elementary and would continue to watch every episode if it continued – on whatever channel that showed it, as long as the same basic characters stayed with the show
This just makes me sad in that I didn’t know there would be no season 8. Bummer. So few really good shows on TV. Most of what is left is that fake reality crap. Hope another network jumps at the chance to pick it up. I would have to subscribe!
I am so disappointed that Elementary has been cancelled after only 7 seasons. It is one of the best shows on TV. A lot of the shows that are coming up in the fall of 2019 are not even worth watching. Please consider another few seasons for Elementary.
Sorry it ended we really e noted it
Hopefully Netflix will pick Elementary up and continue another season assuming the actors want that.
We followed Elementary from Day 1. It has always been a show we never missed. Emotion, action, philosophy; everything to challenge the soul. There is so much more that cold be said. Please reconsider the high quality this show brings to TV so that Holmes/Watson live on!!!!
This is just another bad decision! This show could easily have run another 7 yrs successfully! I now wont be watching cbs nor will i keep CBS all access. Nothing that good left!