Holmes, redux

Rico says he's immersed himself in many of the variants of the Sherlock Holmes stories of late, from rereading the originals by Arthur Conan Doyle, to watching (via Netflix) the BBC version titled simply Sherlock Holmes (photo, top), starring the splendidly-named Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson (a veteran of Afghanistan, appropriately) and the (ugh) American version, Elementary (photo, bottom) starring Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and the slightly miscast but otherwise luscious Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson.
The verdict? Elementary, my dear Watson: the Americans can't do the classics (we're ignoring Basil Rathbone here, of course, along with Jeremy Brett), which is not surprising.