I am the
muddled medic, lover of music, moggies, mysteries and medicine (and also
alliteration) and this is my first post as a Geek Philosopher! This is very
exciting, as it gives me a place to rant about how much I love one of the
greatest characters ever created. The master sleuth, the hider or tobacco in
Turkish slippers, the undisputed master of tobacco ash, of course I mean Mr.
Sherlock Holmes.
My first memory comes from my Grandparents house. The Granada adaptation
was on, the episode was “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”, perhaps a gruesome
introduction as they go, but anyway…
As I was
quite young, probably five or six, for a long time I couldn’t remember what it
was that I had been watching. I do, however, remember being enthralled by a
character who was willing to risk poisoning himself to solve a crime, and the
long-suffering friend who rescued him and saved his life when the experiment
went wrong. It wasn’t until I read the stories for myself, at perhaps fourteen,
that I associated this early memory with Sherlock Holmes at all.
So, from my
first memories of it, I have thought Arthur Conan-Doyle’s creations to be absolutely
awesome, and have since spent many hours watching, reading and listening to the
Holmes stories in various forms. There are some great adaptations out there,
and some….. less great. So, I’m going to go through them, inflict my opinion
about them onto you.
And I’m
going to start with a biggy. In 2010, the TV show “Sherlock” hit our screens. I
saw it for the first time when an English teacher had run out of things to put
in our lessons, and so opened up her series one box-set.
And my first
impression was…..
WOW!!!!
The music,
the acting, the cinematography. The ingenious ways they let us see inside the
Detective’s mind like never before. The great, sweeping shots of London. It was
easy to be swept up in the amazing artistry, and I was already two seasons in
before I paused for breath.
And to
think.
And think
again.
Because,
when I did think about it, there were problems.
Really quite
big ones.
So, lets run
through a few criteria, I’ll use the same ones for the other adaptations, and
see how it holds up. I’m only really going to discuss the first series here,
the others I will save for a separate discussion.
The
main character:
Let’s start
with the basics. The title character, the great Sherlock Holmes. Who seems to
have transformed from a gentleman, initially out for glory, but later deciding
to remain out of the public view, into a petulant, over-dramatic child who is
somehow unable of picking things up for himself.
And look, I
get it. The “genius character who is too smart to understand social norms” is
really intriguing. But it’s not Sherlock Holmes.
It starts in
the first episode. The very first hint of Sherlock we see is when he texts
Lestrade- and a load of journalists- during a press conference. In the few
words he sends, he is incredibly insulting! And while Holmes was not exactly
polite in his dealings with the police, he would never publicly humiliate them
like that. And the list of people he insults is miles long.
But, you
know. Sherlock is being modernised here, maybe he doesn’t have to be the
perfect gentleman any more. But…
I think it matters.
His lack of
gentlemanliness reoccurs several times, from his breaking in on John’s date in
episode two, to his shouting at Mrs Hudson, to…. Molly.
Let’s talk
about Molly. The pathology…… lab technician….. something. Job title never made
clear, because her sole purpose here is to be maybe attracted to Sherlock and
take repeated insults and denials. Oh, and the occasional emotional
manipulation. Because saying a woman’s hair looks nice is the best way of
getting her to violate her employment contract and get her to show you a
corpse.
And…
Sherlock Holmes isn’t exactly a feminist. But he was also written in the
Victorian period, and actually there are many intelligent, independent and
powerful women in the original stories, most famously Irene Adler. We’ll talk
about her in a minute by the way. But he would never take advantage of a woman
in the way he does Molly Hooper, by using her attraction to him to get whatever
he wants. Which is kind of disturbing when you think about it.
I know I
said I would stick to the first series, but I want to talk a bit about
character development, or rather the total lack of it. The only thing I can see
developing is Sherlock’s….. actually no. Series one Sherlock is almost
identical to series four Sherlock. None of the complex changes that happen in
the stories here, no slow reformation as Holmes changes his priority from
becoming a famous, acclaimed detective to simply working for the works sake and
even forsaking the public eye. No, that couldn’t possibly be interesting to see
unfold.
But, on the
positive side, in Sherlock you get to see what goes on inside his mind. We are
introduced to the “mind palace”, an interesting idea, as it is a real memory
technique that Holmes might actually apply. They also get his lack of interest
in politics, the order of the universe etc. down, and even make a point of
highlighting it in the third episode, when he is forced to use his knowledge of
the stars to solve a problem. They also use the idea of the brain as a hard
drive, which I really like, and is a nice metaphor that suits what we know
about the character.
Still, although Benedict
Cumberbatch is always amazing, there isn’t enough to win me over to this
portrayal of the character of the great Sherlock Holmes. They turn a
gentlemanly, ambitious genius into a spoilt child who moves around the world
with no care for the damage he might do to others. One moment that sums him up
nicely comes at the start of the third episode, where he calmly corrects the
grammar of a murderer, cruelly spinning out the moment when he reveals that he
will not help the man, and that he will most likely be executed for his crime.
This is a man who hardly sees himself as human, and frequently refers to
himself as separate from “normal people”. Overconfident, rude, wonderfully
acted but overall a far cry from the eccentric, sometimes terse and insulting,
but overall kind character that I fell in love with as a kid.
So
unfortunately, I find myself unable to give this iteration of the character
more than three deer stalker hats out of ten. He’ll probably need them all to
cover his massive head.
The
faithful sidekick:
Dr John
Watson, the famous narrator of the Holmes stories. A medical man with a soft
side. And yet, somehow, in Sherlock Watson’s gently nature is never allowed to
shine through. In the first episode he’s the naïve, newly returned soldier who
magically recovers from a psychosomatic limp and PTSD when he meets Sherlock,
in the second he’s angry, overstretched, struggling to rebuild his life, and in
the third he basically followed Sherlock around and was… again I find myself
reaching for the word “angry”. I’m starting to wonder if Martin Freeman only
does angry. He does constantly try to remind Sherlock to remember the human
element, but he struggles to turn this into anything productive as I would
expect Watson to do.
Watson
becomes a blogger, of course, rather than a writer. One thing that I’m still
waiting for an adaptation to include is the other writing that Watson has done
in the past, which is referenced in the stories. It explains why Watson’s
instinct is to become a chronicler, and also why he’s so good at it.
One thing
that does bug me a bit is John’s health. In the first episode he has PTSD, he
is woken up by nightmares of the war, he has his old shoulder injury and uses a
stick to walk. In the original these are recurring themes, weather makes his
leg hurt, a few times we see him having nightmares, and the opening of “a study
in scarlet” reveals his bitter memories of war. These are things I would love
to see explored more, this is an opportunity to take a character with
established health problems and explore them further, and yet they seem to
exist for the first episode and then…. Gone. John’s therapy sessions?
Gone.
Any symptoms of PTSD?
Gone.
And that’s
disappointing, because there’s a massive shortage of representation of people
with chronic health problems, and especially mental health problems in the
media. These are part of who Watson is, and I don’t understand why they got rid
of them so soon.
So, what
else is there to say about Watson?
Well….. not
much. He’s angry, occasionally caring, but mostly just happy to follow Sherlock
around. There were easy ways to develop the character which were ignored, and
an opportunity to portray the mental health problems that haunted him in the
modern day were missed. In the end then, I find the John Watson of Sherlock
almost unrecognisable as the kind, gentle doctor who would always speak up and
provide a softer side to Holmes’ sometimes abrasive directness.
So John
Watson scores a measly 1/10, because again, he lacks the vital quality of
kindness.
The other characters:
So, there
are many recurring characters in Sherlock. And… none of them really strike me
as awesome. Mrs Hudson comes the closest, she is caring, she looks after her
lodgers well, but she also was also glad to see her husband executed.
Additionally, her character does seem to revolve around her feeding,
chastising, and generally mothering John and Sherlock. Apart from cooking and
cleaning, we don’t know what she does day to day, we don’t know what her
interest are, and she ends up feeling like an opportunity missed.
Then there’s
Lestrade. The detective who tries to solve crimes on his own, fails, and pulls
in Sherlock to finish the job for him, and is remarkably tolerant of Sherlock
messing up his press conferences, his relationship with his colleagues, and his
own position. Gone is the frequently over-confident bumbler, replaced with
someone who feels like a plot device to get Sherlock onto crime scenes and
nothing else. We don’t even learn his first name until series 2, and still know
almost nothing else about him.
I’ve already
spoken a bit about Molly, so I won’t dwell on her. To be honest, there’s barely
anything to say. I don’t know what her hobbies are, apart from trying to woo
Sherlock, I don’t know what her job is, apart from supplying corpses for
Sherlock, I don’t know what other relationships she has, apart from with
Moriarty, which again exists only so that she can parade her boyfriend in front
of Sherlock and then be hurt when he points out that Moriarty is gay. And then
get another boyfriend who she gets engaged to, parades in front of Sherlock and
then leaves before finally declaring her love for Sherlock. In fact, she can
only really be described in terms of her relationship with Sherlock, which…
isn’t good.
And since we’ve been
talking about Moriarty…. I love him. Moriarty in Sherlock is pure gold. Every
moment he’s on screen he dominates, he’s always one step ahead, he’s always in
control. Seeing him built up through the first two episodes is great, and he
doesn’t disappoint when we finally meet him. Well… I do find myself wishing
that he hadn’t appeared as “Jim from IT” before the grand reveal. And although
he’s great, he…. Well, he isn’t Moriarty, the incredibly intelligent professor,
smart enough to be a member of society while also running a criminal network.
He’s a great villain, but although he is obviously clever, I find it hard to
see him as really clever. There’s just something I love about
the man who no-one suspects, who lectures students and then goes and plots a
murder or two. I also can’t help but wish that they had saved Moriarty for
later, how amazing would it be for us to go through series one and two, for
Sherlock to fake his own death only to find out that he had only managed to get
one of the lieutenants, rather than the real deal…
Anyway.
Overall, I feel that the side characters deserve maybe a six out of ten. Some
likeable, some wonderfully villainous, they overall bring a welcome sense of
reality into the show.
The stories:
So, the
stories. What can I say…. Well, generally, I like them. They are often
intelligently written, and provide interesting scenarios for the characters,
although there are often plot holes. I think we’re not to question how, in the
blind banker the black lotus know exactly when John and Sherlock will pass by
to see their message so that they can remove it completely within a few minutes
of John seeing and taking a picture of it, or how exactly they managed to bring
so many weapons into the country. Or how exactly none of the hostages in
episode three can tell anyone anything useful about Moriarty and his network,
or how Sherlock decides to go and meet Moriarty on his own instead of bringing
the police and setting his own trap. Or why exactly he decided to go off with a
serial killer in episode one, or why Connie Princes true cause of death wasn’t
picked up at a first post-mortem.
What I do
think they do well is to take an original idea from the Conan Doyle collection
and remake it so that, most of the time, someone well acquainted with the
source material will get a few cleverly placed references, but not be able to
tell exactly where the story is going. All in all, I feel comfortable awarding
a handy seven points for the story writing.
The big picture:
Really, what
can I say? Sherlock seems to revolve around moments of absolute brilliance,
surrounded by poor character development, changes from the originals are a
mixture of the sublime and the absurd, I find myself entranced by the brilliant
performances of the actors, while hating the characters they portray.
So all in all, what do I think? Well, series one, which is what I’ve been
referring to in the most part here, is…. Great. Sort of. After that, things
start to change, but that’s sort of more than I want to talk about here. In the
beginning, one thing really shines through about Sherlock, and that is that it
is written by people who love Sherlock Holmes, and who have a great respect for
the material they adapt, although I think they really miss the spot in places,
especially when it comes to the character of Sherlock himself.
So should
you watch it? Absolutely. Enjoy the small references to the original, laugh at
the funny bits, and the hilariously wrong bits. It’s fun, and there are some
good moments nestled in there.
Total score: 17/40
A good
attempt, could do better.
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