Who needs Sherlock Holmes when you have a Dr. Watson as dynamic as this one? In a series that is set in contemporary Pittsburgh and boldly reimagines the characters, Morris Chestnut plays Watson as a brilliant physician who, six months after the death of his detective friend, has returned to take over a clinic where the young doctors he leads specialize in solving stubborn medical mysteries. But Holmes’ demise came at the hands of a certain nemesis named Moriarty, who apparently isn’t yet done with Watson. Sunday, Jan. 26, at 10 p.m., CBS.

by Matthew Pearl

“This shipwreck business, it’s just no fun,” said Chris Vognar in The Boston Globe. Matthew Pearl’s latest work of nonfiction revisits an 1887 voyage that went terribly wrong for a family of five and their hired crew—so badly that you can hardly blame the excursion’s second mate for choosing to crawl into a barrel and stew. Dublin-born Captain Frederick Walker and his wife and three teenage sons had intended to hunt sharks sailed east from Hong Kong. When their ship was shattered in a storm, stranding them on Midway Atoll in the middle of the Pacific, their trouble was just beginning, and Pearl, who has been a best-selling novelist, powers Save Our Souls with “a steady supply of narrative oomph.” This is a roller coaster of a story. “You live and die with every near-rescue that isn’t. Most important, you keep turning the page.” 

For the marooned travelers, “every silver lining had a cloud,” said Curt Schleier in The Minnesota Star Tribune. The Walkers’ crew of 24 at first acted with “surprising efficiency and ingenuity,” salvaging tools and food from the wreckage and repairing lifeboats. But traitors soon emerged. The cook and four accomplices stole some of the provisions and set off in one of the lifeboats. By then, the Walker party had discovered that the island already had one human occupant: a Danish sailor, who taught the newcomers how to gather food. But this would-be savior turned out to be a murderer, and he helped organize an escape attempt by a second group of betrayers. Soon enough, illness swept the island and storms chased away the seabirds the castaways had depended on for sustenance. “To put a ribbon on it,” the captain of the ship that finally reached the island 14 months into the ordeal demanded payment before allowing them to board.

The Walkers’ real-life saga offered “uncanny parallels to the apocryphal Swiss Family Robinson story,” and Pearl highlights those harmonies, said Heather Scott Partington in the Los Angeles Times. Save Our Souls is “also a uniquely 19th-century story in that it examines philosophical questions of that time,” including the duality of man’s nature and every individual’s potential to become a monster. For some of the castaways, such as the first mate, the dire circumstances inspired selfish grabs for power. Others collaborated, while the second mate retreated into himself. Pearl demands we consider whether people are more likely to respond to crisis by battling one another or cooperating. As grounded in the past as it is, “Pearl’s take on the story feels apt for our present moment—more Lord of the Flies than Swiss Family Robinson.”

The influential singer who gave us ‘Soul Man’

Sam Moore’s life took a fateful turn in a Miami nightclub in 1961. The aspiring singer was working as an emcee on amateur night when another young vocalist, Dave Prater, got up to do a Jackie Wilson song. When the nervous Prater struggled with the lyrics, Moore jumped in with an assist, and their tag-team effort delighted the audience. A legendary pairing was born. From 1965 to 1968, Sam & Dave issued a run of electrifying, muscular soul hits recorded in Memphis’ Stax Studio, including “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” “I Thank You,” and “Soul Man.” Marrying Prater’s gruff baritone to Moore’s urgent tenor, the duo became known for exuberant, high-energy performances that evoked gospel. “We were like evangelical singers, like the old tent singers used to be,” Moore said in 2000. “We were actually testifying, preaching.” 

Samuel David Moore was born in Miami to a teacher mother and a father he described as a “street hustler,” said The Guardian. He grew up singing gospel in church, but soon took after his father, running street cons, fathering a child at 16, and doing time for pimping. Once he heard soul singer Jackie Wilson, though, he decided to be a pop star, and the “impromptu call and response” he did with Prater that first night became “the template for the Sam & Dave stage act.” In 1964, the two were signed by Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, who sent them to record at Stax. Their work there with the house band and staff writers Isaac Hayes and David Porter “proved magical,” said Variety. Over two years they landed 10 songs on Billboard’s R&B Top 20, and became the country’s “most powerful R&B concert attraction.” 

“The duo’s ride, though, was never easy,” said Rolling Stone. The two men weren’t friends, and their relationship grew increasingly acrimonious after the hits stopped coming and Moore “grappled with cocaine and heroin issues.” They split in 1970, although Moore’s need for drug money led to sporadic reunions until a final show in 1981. Moore eventually kicked drugs and married Joyce McRae, who managed and helped revive his career. He worked cruise ships and oldies tours, recorded with acolytes Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen, and performed for six presidents, from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump. To have endured and performed for such “special people,” he said in 2018, “it tells me, I guess, my voice said a lot.”