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Sherlock (2010) BBC Series Discussion Thread

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  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    Count me in for any separate thread on Holmes stories. I re-read them throughout my life.

    I've often considered joining the Sherlock Holmes Society; I still might, yet I feel it would be much more interesting for me if I lived near enough to London to get to their events.
  • Jones_The_BondJones_The_Bond
    Posts: 344
    'Elementary' is fine for what it is, and nowhere near as bad as I originally feared it might be. They aren't quite as clever in adapting and incorporating bits of the original material (although bees made an appearance recently - the little Holmes details are in there) and, as you say @boldfinger they are really churning out the episodes, especially when compared to the Beeb's more measured approach. New York is a wonderful city, but I confess that I do miss London. I agree with @SaintMark though. It tides you over until the BBC swing back into action.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    edited April 2013 Posts: 28,694
    Jones_The_Bond wrote:
    'Elementary' is fine for what it is, and nowhere near as bad as I originally feared it might be. They aren't quite as clever in adapting and incorporating bits of the original material (although bees made an appearance recently - the little Holmes details are in there) and, as you say @boldfinger they are really churning out the episodes, especially when compared to the Beeb's more measured approach. New York is a wonderful city, but I confess that I do miss London. I agree with @SaintMark though. It tides you over until the BBC swing back into action.

    I wait out the new season by watching the past ones; it doesn't get better than that. Of course, now I will be spending my time going through the novels/stories I haven't read yet that are to be featured in the upcoming season 3.
  • Jones_The_BondJones_The_Bond
    Posts: 344
    That's a good idea @0Brady. I think you get a lot more from the series if you are familiar with the original source material. Some of the twists they have given to beloved tales have been wonderfully surprising. I was completely thrown by 'The Hounds of Baskerville' and the angle they took with that one. I didn't know quite what to expect. 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', of course, having been done to death over the years.

    Really looking forward to 'The Empty Hearse.'
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    Jones_The_Bond wrote:
    That's a good idea @0Brady. I think you get a lot more from the series if you are familiar with the original source material. Some of the twists they have given to beloved tales have been wonderfully surprising. I was completely thrown by 'The Hounds of Baskerville' and the angle they took with that one. I didn't know quite what to expect. 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', of course, having been done to death over the years.

    Really looking forward to 'The Empty Hearse.'

    Yes, Mr. Gatiss did a fantastic job of updating the Baskervilles story and did something so out of left field and clever with it.

    I love how the episode
    deals with Holmes at odds with himself over what he saw or didn't see when he feels he can no longer trust his senses.

    Also, I love how Gatiss
    updated the deadly mire to be a mine field around the Baskerville testing site.
    Very very clever.
  • SandySandy Somewhere in Europe
    Posts: 4,012
    Jones_The_Bond wrote:
    A Study In Scarlet is fascinating because it very clearly tells us the sort of things that Holmes does not know anything about. Holmes has very little interest in trivia that cannot aid him in his profession. Although to Holmes, 'trivia' appears to include very elementary astronomy (he doesn't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun). Was watching a recent episode of Elementary (a show I have mixed feelings about) and Sherlock made an educated point about astronomy which disappointed me somewhat. Can't help but think that Moffat's version wouldn't have made that error.

    Can't wait for the Third Series. You get the same feeling with 'Sherlock' that you do with the current run of Doctor Who - they are being made by people passionate about the original material, and their loyalty, sprinkled with innovation and daring, produces magnificent results. BBC Wales are producing some extraordinary stuff at the moment. Long may it continue.

    You are right, Moffat and Gatiss wouldn't make that mistake. Here is an entry in John Watson's blog to accompany the conversation that takes place in the first episode, A Study in Pink. It made me smile while I was watching it and think "You really got him right" :D
  • Jones_The_BondJones_The_Bond
    Posts: 344
    How fantastic @Sandy! I hadn't read that before, or if I had, it didn't register at the time. I just always remember that line from the first Holmes book because it just seemed so bizarre. How can someone so fiercely intelligent not know something that schoolchildren everywhere (you would hope) did? But that's Holmes. It makes him far more fascinating than the usual 'know-it-all' detective.

    In Moffat and Gatiss we really are in the safest hands since the old Jeremy Brett series aren't we?

    I loved that little twist too @0Brady. They even kept the name. It's the little touches that make all the difference.
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    edited April 2013 Posts: 12,480
    And I love that John's blog counter is stuck at 1895.
    Golden age indeed for Holmes.

    Well, I went online and checked out the Sherlock Holmes Society of London site. this is the old one, begun about 1950. Tons of members, some famous, over the years. Hadn't been there in a while. Nicely surprised.

    Still plenty of good Holmes events, including pub meets, tours, and meetings. Then I saw: Review of Series 2. (!!)
    So here is one member reviewer's impressions of the new BBC Holmes series:
    [url]http://www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk/event_info.php?id=270 [/url]
    I found it an enjoyable read; you may find it interesting.

    And I just found out that Stephen Moffat spoke at the society's annual dinner last year, Jan. 2012. :)
    http://www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk/event_info.php?id=269

    Hope I put the links in correctly for you to read.
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    Ah, my last post about the Sherlock Holmes Society, for now (some of you may enjoy reading their website), is that they have a poll on their home page, as to what happened at the end of Reichenbach Falls. I thought their choices to be interesting and amusing:
    How did Sherlock survive the fall?
    The body was Moriarty
    Watson hallucinated the entire thing
    Holmes landed in the rubbish truck
    A Time Lord was involved somehow
    The body was a dummy
    Mycroft Holmes arranged it
    Molly Hooper arranged it
    The body was one of Moriarty's henchmen, surgically altered to look like Sherlock
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    I was looking at the end of the Fall episode today and
    interestingly enough took a few screencaps when Sherlock is supposed to be on the stretcher, and found that the person doesn't appear to be Sherlock/Benedict. I don't know if the person laying on the stretcher is just Benedict's stunt double and that is why that is or if the fact that it doesn't appear to be Sherlock is a clue that another body was used. I am afraid to do further research because of possible series 3 spoilers, but make of it what you will, folks:

    http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8262/8666006719_6840478c24_b.jpg
    http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8259/8667108222_bbe4271c54_b.jpg
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    Well. I think maybe
    because John saw Sherlock on the street, it is supposed to be Sherlock. Molly and friends got the ambulance people to whisk him away quickly before the "secret" of what really happened came to light. I am guessing that is just the stunt double. Anybody's guess, though.
  • boldfingerboldfinger
    Posts: 5,767
    Jones_The_Bond wrote:
    I agree with @SaintMark though. It tides you over until the BBC swing back into action.
    Well, I must say I´m absolutely not bored by repeatedly delving into the BBC episodes, since they are so full of clever little details, and it seems impossible for the chemistry between the protagonists to get stale :-).
    4EverBonded wrote:
    Ah, my last post about the Sherlock Holmes Society, for now (some of you may enjoy reading their website), is that they have a poll on their home page, as to what happened at the end of Reichenbach Falls. I thought their choices to be interesting and amusing:
    How did Sherlock survive the fall?
    The body was Moriarty
    Watson hallucinated the entire thing
    Holmes landed in the rubbish truck
    A Time Lord was involved somehow
    The body was a dummy
    Mycroft Holmes arranged it
    Molly Hooper arranged it
    The body was one of Moriarty's henchmen, surgically altered to look like Sherlock
    Wow, some of those suggestions are really out there 8-} .
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    Yes, I think one refers to Dr. Who - although I am not up on Dr. Who. ;)

    I also don't get bored watching the series again; chock full of great detail and wit.
  • Jones_The_BondJones_The_Bond
    Posts: 344
    If you're essentially endorsed by the Sherlock Holmes Society, you must be doing something right.

    The various versions of Holmes stories over the years differ wildly in both quality and faithfulness to Conan Doyle (faithfulness not necessarily being a prerequisite to being successful, of course) but I've managed to find many of them to be enjoyable. I take them for what they are, and enjoy the Holmes content. From the slightly creaky earlier stabs, to the comedic Without A Clue, with Michael Caine, to Ian Richardson's short tenure, to the sublime Jeremy Brett, right up to the Downey Junior movies, and into this year's exciting Series 3 of 'Sherlock'.

    I think, for differing reasons, that the three versions I put on a pedestal, are the current Moffat/Gatiss incarnation, Brett's ultra-faithful Granada TV version (definitive in my mind) and Basil Rathbone's 1930s/40s Hollywood era. Nothing better on a rainy Sunday afternoon than to put a light-hearted Rathbone/Bruce outing on.

    There have been some stinkers over the decades though...
  • Jones_The_BondJones_The_Bond
    Posts: 344
    Yes, the tongue-in-cheek Timelord option, does point in a certain Moffat-esque direction.....

    You get the feeling that Benedict Cumberbatch was destined to become either Sherlock Holmes or one of the 'Doctors'. Fortunately for us, he headed to Baker Street rather than into the TARDIS. He would have been great at both, of course.
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    I wholeheartedly agree that Cumberbatch is in the role he should be in. I love the Brett series, too. This new one is so refreshing, and it is nice to have something to anticipate that you really do not know quite what they will do with it. Clever writing indeed. But the actors are key - a great match up.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    I have never been too big into the Rathbone/Bruce films. I can't stand how Watson is portrayed as a bumbling idiot. BBC' Sherlock and the Granada series are more than enough for me to get my Holmes fix outside of Doyle. They are the essential adaptions in my mind.
  • Jones_The_BondJones_The_Bond
    Posts: 344
    Nigel Bruce's portrayal as Doctor Watson is, of course, quite controversial, and it certainly impacted certain subsequent performances of the character. Whole generations were born, who hadn't read Conan Doyle, who believed that Watson should be an avuncular, bumbling, loveable, comic character. That's not a good thing, of course. I can fully understand people disliking Bruce's Watson. But it was a deliberate artistic decision. For the series of films they were creating (which were larger than life and, especially when the war was on, deliberately fantastical and escapist at times) they found that the character of Watson, essentially a narrator, was too dull for their purposes. He didn't stand-out on the silver screen. It just didn't work for them.

    The problem was not that Nigel Bruce, a superb actor, failed as Watson, but that he was so popular that he created a new stereotype for John Watson that was far removed from Conan Doyle's original.

    I'm rather fond of Rathbone and Bruce.

    I think most of us on here would agree on one point, and that is that Martin Freeman has absolutely nailed the character. His achievement is on a par with that of Cumberbatch.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    I think Benedict and Martin's chemistry is the most palpable out of all the Holmes and Watson pairs.
  • Jones_The_BondJones_The_Bond
    Posts: 344
    I agree. Often the pairing is let down by a slightly underwhelming Watson, but Freeman is every bit a match for Cumberbatch.
  • SandySandy Somewhere in Europe
    Posts: 4,012
    Thank you for the links @4EverBonded! Had a nice time reading them.

    I think most of the options in that poll are outrageous. I voted for the option
    Molly arranged it
    however it's obviously just one piece of the puzzle.
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    I voted for the same; and if you saw the poll ongoing results, it is the one most voted on. Surely they were having fun with some of those choices!

    Does anyone have a favorite Sherlock Holmes website? Yes, I do check thescienceofdeduction from time to time now. It's great. Anything else out there someone recommends?
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    edited April 2013 Posts: 28,694
    I love Sherlockology.com. They have these great features that are great to use, like calendars with unlockable desktops pertaining to Sherlock if you can solve an anagram. They also just won a Shorty for best Fansite, two years running!
    http://www.sherlockology.com/
  • SandySandy Somewhere in Europe
    Posts: 4,012
    0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:
    I love Sherlockology.com. They have these great features that are great to use, like calendars with unlockable desktops pertaining to Sherlock if you can solve an anagram. They also just won a Shorty for best Fansite, two years running!
    http://www.sherlockology.com/

    I would say the same. I only found out about it recently but it is excellent.
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    edited April 2013 Posts: 12,480
    Oh, thanks - good to know! I will check it out later.

    I just realized, @Sandy, you could probably write up a good villain maybe on the Profession of the Villains thread (taking my hint that the villain be a researcher - ha!)

    What would Sherlock say about villains? "Ah, there is no uncommon criminal anymore. Crime has become so commonplace, so mundane. After Moriarty, what fun is there? Where is the challenge? I'm BORED!"

    John: "Try annotating your tobacco ash paper for the millioneth time, Sherlock, while I just lock up the syringes again, and hide the cigs ..."
  • SandySandy Somewhere in Europe
    Posts: 4,012
    4EverBonded wrote:
    Oh, thanks - good to know! I will check it out later.

    I just realized, @Sandy, you could probably write up a good villain maybe on the Profession of the Villains thread (taking my hint that the villain be a researcher - ha!)

    What would Sherlock say about villains? "Ah, there is no uncommon criminal anymore. Crime has become so commonplace, so mundane. After Moriarty, what fun is there? Where is the challenge? I'm BORED!"

    John: "Try annotating your tobacco ash paper for the millioneth time, Sherlock, while I just lock up the syringes again ..."

    I have no imagination for villains, I'm sorry :))
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    4EverBonded wrote:
    Oh, thanks - good to know! I will check it out later.

    I just realized, @Sandy, you could probably write up a good villain maybe on the Profession of the Villains thread (taking my hint that the villain be a researcher - ha!)

    What would Sherlock say about villains? "Ah, there is no uncommon criminal anymore. Crime has become so commonplace, so mundane. After Moriarty, what fun is there? Where is the challenge? I'm BORED!"

    John: "Try annotating your tobacco ash paper for the millioneth time, Sherlock, while I just lock up the syringes again, and hide the cigs ..."

    Seeing as Sherlock is often concerned about solving crimes for the puzzle, I am shocked at how differently he acts towards Moriarty. Yes, he has respect for the professor, but is determined to stop him any way he can, even if that means the puzzles stop. He is so determined in fact, that he is willing to die just so that London is freed of Moriarty.

    Sherlock [to Professor Moriarty]: 'If I were assured of your eventual destruction I would, in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept my own.'

    'But I could not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged.'

    What I am trying to say is, Doyle's Holmes can at times sacrifice the puzzle for the common good. That is what I love about his chase after Moriarty. We see his true care for those that Moriarty has hurt through his organization/crime network and the countless others in danger because of his existence, even admitting to Watson that his brilliance often over shadowed his crimes.

    'My horror at his crimes was lost in my admiration at his skill.'
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    Posts: 12,480
    Yes. I am also hopeful that Charles Augustus Milverton gets his full due in this new series. Another slimy villain. Nobody tops Moriarty, though. Not even Sebastian Moran.
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    4EverBonded wrote:
    Yes. I am also hopeful that Charles Augustus Milverton gets his full due in this new series. Another slimy villain. Nobody tops Moriarty, though. Not even Sebastian Moran.

    I dream of seeing Milverton! I love how Holmes and Watson are even willing to break the law to stop his cruelty. If we do this Holmes book/story club that has to be one we read. :)
  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    edited April 2013 Posts: 12,480
    Let's do it. I cannot put effort into starting it now, but you and Sandy can chair it - @Sandy, are you listening? Just start a private SH book club and I'm there. Slippers, if not pipe, in hand. ;)
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