Amateur Holmesian Scholarship

I am very positive about this new modern Holmes adaptation, especially reading the interview that the Horror Reanimted website did with Mark Gatiss. They asked some good questions about the upcoming adaptation and here are some of my favourite quotes:

The thing that inspired us to do it is, much as we adore all Victoriana and fog-bound London, the essential characters have been lost in the fog. So many accoutrements of top hats and hansom cabs that, when you read the stories, you realise Holmes is an extraordinary modern man in a modern metropolitan London. They weren’t period stories to the people that were reading them. So we worked off exactly the same principle.

He’s very right about the characters getting lost. You all know my main complaint about the Guy Ritchie adaptation is that they’ve pretty much gone “hey, I want to do James Bond… I know! We’ll put him in Victorian London, everyone loves period drama, and… get this, we’ll make him Sherlock Holmes!” I don’t want a new Sherlock Holmes interpretation, I want Sherlock Holmes! If it’s got to the point where the only way I can get this is by putting him in a modern day setting and stripping away all the period stuff, then that’s absolutely fine with me.

We’re not only keeping it [the essential character of Holmes], we are restoring it. I’ve become so tired of adaptations that think they’re being sexy and modern by giving him this incredible drug habit. They always get it wrong. In that recent version of The Hound of the Baskervilles - at the commencement of the greatest case in his career he goes off to the loos and shoots up. He does it because he’s bored!

Too right! That was one (of the many) problems I had with that stupid BBC ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’, drugs were not the only thing about Holmes and the Granada series proved that you can still keep the drug problem without making it the focal point of the plot. That’s one of the good things about the Russian Sherlock Holmes series, they skipped all the drug use entirely because it was the stories and the characters that were the important part.

… these are the best friends in the world. They fill a hole: Holmes is humanised by Watson, and Holmes saves Watson’s life essentially. Watson has nothing left in his life, he’s invalided out of the army, he has nowhere to go, and then this amazing man gives him a life of adventure. But Holmes is virtually a psychopath and Watson knocks the edges off him. Together they become best friends. That’s the essence of the idea – to get back to what you love from the stories: that these are the best two people you could ever want to be around.

This is almost exactly how I see the relationship between Holmes and Watson. Mark Gatiss is a geeky fanboy, not only that but he’s a Holmesian (I think he’s a honorary member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London as well) and I am really looking forward to this adaptation. You never know, it might be the thing that makes me go “yes, I will get an aerial for my TV and pay my TV licence; the BBC deserve it.”

I mentioned awhile back that the BBC were making a modern day Holmes adaptation with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, well today the Daily Telegraph reported on and it gave out a few more details; Martin Freeman is set to be Dr Watson and Rupert Graves as Lestrade. I’m not entirely sure who Rupert Graves is so I’m not quite able to comment but Martin Freeman is an interesting choice. To me, he’s a comedy actor but this quote from the brilliant Steven Moffatt makes me believe that they are going to be as true as possible to the original characters, some things will alter slightly as it is going to be shifted to modern day so I have no fears that Watson will be reduced to the bumbling sidekick role. If he goes, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffatt will have a lot to answer for.

“Everything that matters about Holmes and Watson is the same. Conan Doyle’s original stories were never about frock coats and gas light. They’re about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes – and, frankly, the hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures and that’s what matters.”

An hour long pilot is set to be shown on BBC one in the autumn, with a bit of luck it’ll prove to be popular and I reckon they’re aiming for the same kind of market that ‘House’ is aimed at. Randomly, I mentioned to the deputy chief lx at work who is a huge fan of ‘House’ that the BBC are basically making their version of ‘House’ but sticking to the original inspiration – he hadn’t realised that Gregory House was in part inspired by Sherlock Holmes.

The head of drama for BBC Wales, Piers Wenger (the guys producing the show) said something that definitely makes me think the production people are clued in to what the show should be about, except now I can’t shake the mental image of Sherlock Holmes in tight spandex out of my head.

“Our Sherlock is a dynamic superhero in a modern world, an arrogant, genius sleuth driven by a desire to prove himself cleverer than the perpetrator and the police – everyone in fact.”

To be honest, whatever the BBC come up with it can’t be any worse that the Rupert Everett adaptation they made a couple of Christmases ago. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t go with setting it in the Victorian era, my general opinion of the BBC’s output is not great but they do, do awesome costume dramas.