If Inconvenient, Come Anyway.
Everyone on your flist has posted about this already, but it's my turn now and I'm going to take it: earlier this week, I watched A Study in Pink (iPlayer link, valid until the fifteenth of August), the first of the BBC's three-part Sherlock series, a modern adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
I absolutely loved it.
- Watson is longsuffering and intelligent! My main question when considering a Sherlock Holmes adaptation is 'is the character of Watson afforded the respect he deserves?', and, to my delight, he was.
- I shall never get used to hearing Holmes referred to as 'Sherlock'.
- An air of the Victorian somehow hangs around even this updated version. Holmes himself in particular gives the impression of being a man out of time, despite his mobile phone usage. I have met very few modern young men who carry a riding crop, and his style of speech seems a little anachonistic. This, I feel, is a good thing; you can never entirely remove Sherlock Holmes from his home time.
- This air does mean that the undeniably modern aspects feel a bit disconcerting. I keep forgetting it's a modern adaptation and then OH SURPRISE LAPTOP.
- There were points at which Holmes's behaviour was very much like that of the Eleventh Doctor indeed. It makes me wonder whether Moffat modelled his interpretation of Holmes after the Doctor or whether, as Holmes (if not Moffat's Holmes) preceded the Doctor, Moffat modelled his Doctor after his interpretation of Holmes.
- Really liked the text on the screen, on the whole. 'Dying' was so obvious that explicitly saying it felt a bit patronising, but the rapid 'wet' 'dry' 'clean' observations when Holmes was inspecting the body worked very well, I felt.
- The cabbie was playing a very Derren Brown game, wasn't he? Well, all right, Brown's games aren't usually a matter of life or death, but the 'it's not a question of chance; it's a question of what you think I think you think about the way I've positioned these bottles' was very Derren Brown indeed. I would love to see Sherlock Holmes investigating Derren Brown. Brown fits very well indeed into Victorian times, as darkest_alchemy has illustrated by writing - this is not an exaggeration - over one hundred thousand words of a Victorian Derren Brown AU. (Although, now that Sherlock has been created, I suppose there's no need to send Brown back in time if one wants to have him meet Sherlock Holmes.)
- It's not Holmes and Watson without homoerotic subtext, and homoerotic subtext was had!
In fact, at the moment, it's not a BBC series without homoerotic subtext. I'm starting to wonder whether it's a result of increasing awareness of fandom. 'Right; a large contingent of our viewers want gay. MORE GAY. GAY UP EVERYTHING.' Certainly I feel that homoerotic undertones are being less played for laughs nowadays - the scene in the restaurant, although there were elements of humour, seemed on the whole to be a fairly 'straight' homoerotic scene - which perhaps reflects a shift in the perception of the audience from 'let's have Holmes think Watson is romantically interested in him, they'll find it hilarious' to 'let's have Holmes think Watson is romantically interested in him, they'll be genuinely interested in that concept'.
Of course, Holmes being such a brilliant deductician (I don't think this is technically a word, even though it clearly should be), I can't believe that he would believe Watson to be romantically interested in him unless Watson actually was. Clearly Watson is simply not yet aware of his own desires.
If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan and haven't yet watched this, I would highly recommend that you give it a try.
I absolutely loved it.
- Watson is longsuffering and intelligent! My main question when considering a Sherlock Holmes adaptation is 'is the character of Watson afforded the respect he deserves?', and, to my delight, he was.
- I shall never get used to hearing Holmes referred to as 'Sherlock'.
- An air of the Victorian somehow hangs around even this updated version. Holmes himself in particular gives the impression of being a man out of time, despite his mobile phone usage. I have met very few modern young men who carry a riding crop, and his style of speech seems a little anachonistic. This, I feel, is a good thing; you can never entirely remove Sherlock Holmes from his home time.
- This air does mean that the undeniably modern aspects feel a bit disconcerting. I keep forgetting it's a modern adaptation and then OH SURPRISE LAPTOP.
- There were points at which Holmes's behaviour was very much like that of the Eleventh Doctor indeed. It makes me wonder whether Moffat modelled his interpretation of Holmes after the Doctor or whether, as Holmes (if not Moffat's Holmes) preceded the Doctor, Moffat modelled his Doctor after his interpretation of Holmes.
- Really liked the text on the screen, on the whole. 'Dying' was so obvious that explicitly saying it felt a bit patronising, but the rapid 'wet' 'dry' 'clean' observations when Holmes was inspecting the body worked very well, I felt.
- The cabbie was playing a very Derren Brown game, wasn't he? Well, all right, Brown's games aren't usually a matter of life or death, but the 'it's not a question of chance; it's a question of what you think I think you think about the way I've positioned these bottles' was very Derren Brown indeed. I would love to see Sherlock Holmes investigating Derren Brown. Brown fits very well indeed into Victorian times, as darkest_alchemy has illustrated by writing - this is not an exaggeration - over one hundred thousand words of a Victorian Derren Brown AU. (Although, now that Sherlock has been created, I suppose there's no need to send Brown back in time if one wants to have him meet Sherlock Holmes.)
- It's not Holmes and Watson without homoerotic subtext, and homoerotic subtext was had!
In fact, at the moment, it's not a BBC series without homoerotic subtext. I'm starting to wonder whether it's a result of increasing awareness of fandom. 'Right; a large contingent of our viewers want gay. MORE GAY. GAY UP EVERYTHING.' Certainly I feel that homoerotic undertones are being less played for laughs nowadays - the scene in the restaurant, although there were elements of humour, seemed on the whole to be a fairly 'straight' homoerotic scene - which perhaps reflects a shift in the perception of the audience from 'let's have Holmes think Watson is romantically interested in him, they'll find it hilarious' to 'let's have Holmes think Watson is romantically interested in him, they'll be genuinely interested in that concept'.
Of course, Holmes being such a brilliant deductician (I don't think this is technically a word, even though it clearly should be), I can't believe that he would believe Watson to be romantically interested in him unless Watson actually was. Clearly Watson is simply not yet aware of his own desires.
If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan and haven't yet watched this, I would highly recommend that you give it a try.