Is Forever Another Sherlock?

I've vocalised before about how disappointed I've been with this years television season and one of the shows that I detested before even attempting to watch it was Forever. In Forever we have another Sherlock Holmes type character in Dr. Henry Morgan (Ioan Gruffudd aka Mr Fantastic), only in this iteration the character is unable to die. Well a more accurate description is that he is unable to stay dead as he dies from injuries much like us mere mortals but he ends up being reborn. In water. Naked. I wasn't looking forward to this purely because we already have two Sherlock Holmes series running with CBS' Elementary and the BBC's Sherlock as well as the Robert Downey Jr. movie franchise so do we really need another one airing when we already have three that we're following? My answer was no, of course. Henry never being able to stay dead seems like a thing that would be appealing to me but knowing that straight away took all the suspense out of the show for me and was another reason for me to avoid the show. So I judged a book by it's cover and didn't care to find out whether I was correct or not, but then a friend of mine started discussing it and said he really enjoyed it. At that point I decided to put aside my bias opinion and watch the pilot episode which I'm glad I did as four episodes later I realised I was hooked.

Watching the episodes made me realise that I was pretty much completely wrong in my initial assumptions of the show. The character of Henry Morgan is a Sherlock type character but it seems to make a lot more sense in this show why he is so brilliant, being able to piece together events and personalities of people easily as he has been around for two centuries and spent a large amount of time observing people. In other Sherlock adaptations the character just seems brilliant and there wasn't really much explanation for it which the audience just accepted it. Henry being anti social also makes a lot more sense in the show as he will outlive whomever he forges a relationship with so he feels it's best to avoid it so there is less pain for him in the long run which makes him a lot more human than Sherlock who just thinks he's above everyone else so doesn't dabble with them.
Forever does take a procedural format as Henry is a talented and intuitive medical examiner who the police enlist to help with their cases. Having a murder to solve every week will most likely get tiresome after a while so the show has wised up and made Henry's aversion to death a major story arc which we get to see quite a bit of in every episode. I wasn't really expecting this, I thought it would be like Elementary when the major storyline comes in a few episodes till the end of the season but in Forever it is very much in the forefront. We have Henry experimenting with different ways to die and hoping that one of them will stick as he is sick of his eternal life, as well as his fellow immortal stalker Adam who we will be finding out more of in the upcoming episodes. The show is also flashback heavy which is brilliant, we get to explore much of Henry's past and how it links in with the case he is working on at the time. We have two centuries of Henry's life to cover so hopefully it will be explored throughout the series.

I said earlier how Henry being unable to die lessens the suspense of the show but I forgot to factor in the people around him. He is working closely with Detective Martinez (Alana de la Garza) who has a lot of demons of her own that she is fighting and is an emotionally vulnerable character so she could be in Adam's eyesight if he is looking to hurt Henry. More importantly we have Abe (Judd Hirsch) who Henry has raised as a son since birth and is the only one who knows his secret (other than Adam), he is Henry's only confidant. The constant references to Abe's advanced age isn't lost on me and although I'm not fearful of Henry's life I am fearful of his. Abe is likeable from the moment we meet him and it would be crippling to see him go so hopefully I've just got my Lost mentality on and am reading too much into the show.

So I'll admit it, I was wrong. I don't admit it that often but I'm going to now as I found the show compelling and it didn't deserve my harsh judgements before I even watched the show. I look forward to watching Forever unfold for many years to come.

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