Watson (2025)
We’ve been fans of Morris Chestnut since Boyz n the Hood (1991). The handsome and versatile actor has been the star of action movies like G.I. Jane (1997), rom coms like The Brothers (2001) and Think Like a Man (2012), dramedies like The Best Man trilogy (1999, 2013, and 2022), and thrillers like The Perfect Guy (2015). He’s also moved seamlessly between TV shows like Rosewood (2015-17) and Reasonable Doubt (2024), and the big screen. Well, Mr. Chestnut is back, this time as Dr. John Watson, half of the storied, typically British dynamic duo alongside Sherlock Holmes. But instead of being set in Victorian England, Chestnut’s new CBS drama brings us to modern-day Pittsburgh where he heads up a high-tech, cutting-edge medical clinic that deals with patients with mysterious, hard to diagnose illnesses.
The show opens with a Hollywood action movie calibre bang at the stunning site of Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Watson is running alone through a dense forest full of towering trees. But he is calling out for Holmes who is unseen. When Watson approaches a cliff’s edge, he sees Holmes from afar struggling over a gun with another unknown man before the two men plummet into the churning white water below. We then witness the daring Watson jump into the dangerous current in an effort to save his friend only to be swept helplessly over the falls before floating listlessly and unconscious, blood trailing from a head wound. The scene is dramatic and cinematic.
When we next see Watson, he has suffered a traumatic brain injury and awakens in a hospital bed with long-term ally (or is he?) Shinwell Johnson (played by the devilish Ritchie Coster) at his side. It is through this mental haze and emotional trauma that Watson must process the news that Holmes and the other man did not survive. The other surprise is that Holmes was tremendously wealthy and has left Watson the funding to establish his own clinic.
Interestingly, the clinic is not in the typical American locations of Los Angeles, New York City, or Chicago. Watson, instead sets up in Pittsburgh as a geneticist and internist at University Hospital of Pennsylvania (UHOP), staffing his clinic with Johnson and a team of four other top docs, each expert in different specializations from neurology to functional medicine. One doc, a twin whose doctor brother is also employed by Watson (the Crofts played by Peter Mark Kendall and Riley Orr), shares that that each staff member is an experiment to Watson, a medical puzzle to unravel about biology and environment, nature and nurture. Perhaps, but all Watson is willing to say is that they are all the best of the best and that they must approach their work as detectives.
The first case we witness deals with a white woman who is five months pregnant and not doing well at all. She gets hit by a car after running aimlessly into the street to escape what she believes are the melting faces of the caregivers at the clinic she has visited. But the mystery for the team is not what her symptoms are, but what has caused them. You see, the woman named Erica, can’t sleep. The diagnosis is initially Fatal Familial Insomnia, an inherited disease that Watson quickly surmises she can’t possibly have because it is inherited and her dad, whom she had been told was a sufferer, actually did not have it.
The plot then leads us through a range of possibilities and the investigative teamwork of Watson’s doctors all carried out through his brilliant leadership. This directs them to Erica’s aunt and cousin, Autumn, who they eventually deduce is actually her half-sister when she succumbs to the same hereditary illness.
The relationships between the characters – mainly doctors – are slowly revealed during their engagements with their patients, their patient’s families, and each other. In one such scene, the bonds between Watson and Johnson are exposed as Johnson drives Watson to visit Erica’s family. As they reminisce about the dearly departed Holmes, Watson reveals that Holmes was the only person who could say the word “Eureka” without sounding stupid.
But the show also gives us a glimpse into Watson’s rather troubled personal life that includes his ex-wife, the beautiful and intelligent Dr. Mary Morstan (played by Rochelle Aytes of Madea’s Family Reunion [2006] from the big screen and Mistresses [2013-16]) from TV) who happens to be a gifted surgeon who runs UHOP, the place to which many of Watson’s patients are eventually brought. Although we do not get the entire back story, it is clear that their marriage has broken down in part due to a level of neglect on Watson’s part which stemmed from his fixation on work. But although he is visibly regretful and having difficulty coming to terms with the demise of their marriage, his destructive patterns are lingering.
For one thing, he has enlisted Johnson to (reluctantly) get him under-the-table meds for lingering symptoms from his traumatic brain injury (behind the back of his neurologist) his own employee Dr. Ingrid Derian (Eve Harlow). But although Johnson expresses doubts about Watson’s self-treatment in episode 2 stating, “You are still using an injured brain to decide how to treat that very same brain matter,” something that transpires in the last frames of episode 1 leaves us wondering if Johnson is truly reluctant. Or more to the point, is he even the trusted friend and confidant that Watson supposes? And, by the way, Harlow is not as clear cut as she may seem either.
When the Doctors Croft debated the why’s of their choice as the teammates of the brilliant Watson, they can’t deduce Watson’s logic in choosing Derian. When she later poses the question directly to Watson, he tells her that he discovered she had lied about something trivial on her CV, the fact that she had acted in a certain play while in college. It is this lie from an otherwise exceptionally skilled physician that has motivated Watson to hire her so he can understand the personality disorder behind it. And indeed, he is correct as we later see a restless Derian at home at night in bed, arise to crack open a medical book with a page flagged about Anti-Social Personality Disorder. So disturbingly, Watson is lying to and withholding information from Derian, his neurologist, who is herself the textbook definition of a pathological liar.
Watson seems poised to deliver not “whodunnits,” but suspenseful “what-caused-its” across high-tech, clinical settings and the various neighbourhoods and cityscapes of Pittsburgh, the City of Bridges. Led by Chestnut’s Watson who is equally charismatic, confident, and vulnerable (the last due to his personal and medical problems), the other leading roles are intriguing, and the cast is talented and diverse with plenty of room for compelling weekly guest spots.
The biggest reveal of the first episode is about the haunting image that Watson recalls from his traumatic jump into the waters of Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, a man’s hand with middle finger and ring finger fused together. It is therefore shocking when we see Johnson seated in a cable car alongside the mysterious and supposedly dead Moriarty (Randal Park), the third man who plummeted into the currents of Reichenbach Falls. Oh, and by the way, Moriarty just happens to have the rare disorder which has fused his middle and ring fingers together. Eureka!