Sherlock
Regulars
at
Sherlock Holmes Society get-togethers may have thrown their
deerstalkers on the
ground and cursed loudly at news of the BBC
modernising their hero.
But
having seen
a preview of Sherlock at a
screening
this week, I can assure them that storming Television Centre with
Holmes’
favourite weapons of canes, swords and riding crops won’t be
necessary.
Sherlock
is really very
good, and co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have done a
brilliant job.
Their
21st-century reboot is faithful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
stories, it’s
thrilling, laugh out loud funny and has fiendishly clever twists.
Benedict
Cumberbatch as action hero
The
casting is
even Holmesian in its astuteness. Benedict Cumberbatch has heavy
dramatic roles
on his CV – Hawking, Stuart: A Life Backwards – but
here he’s
a fine action hero, with the required disdain, charisma and energy.
Meanwhile,
Martin Freeman leaves The Office
firmly behind as Dr Watson. He is by turns touching and funny playing
second
fiddle to the famous violinist cum ‘consulting
detective’. He steals quite a
few scenes as the nonplussed companion, often irked by
Holmes’ bloody annoying
smart-alecness. Una Stubbs is irresistible as the mumsy landlady Mrs
Hudson.
A
Study in Pink
is the first
of three 90-minute films. This opener, written by Steven Moffat
(moonlighting
from his day job as showrunner for Doctor
Who), echoes Holmes’ first adventure, published in
1887, A Study in Scarlet.
Rupert Graves
as Lestrade
So
we see
Watson returning home broken by soldierly duty in Afghanistan,
as in the original, and being introduced to the friendless genius
Holmes, who is looking for a flatmate.
Watson
is of
course irritated and dazzled by his new chum’s
presumptuousness, but they bond
when Holmes is called upon by DI Lestrade (Rupert Graves), who is
stumped –
‘The police are always out of their depth,’ says
our hero – by three serial
suicides.
Of
the crime’s
unravelling I can reveal nothing for fear of ruining the fun for
viewers (and
fear of being slipped Devil’s-Foot Root poison by someone
from the Society).
Holmes’
website
– The Science of Deduction
But
of the
update it’s safe to say Moffat and Gatiss (a star and writer
of Doctor Who and The
League of Gentlemen) were right to think that Holmes could
survive without Hansom carriages and London
fog if the
essential dash of the stories and characters was preserved.
What
they’ve
cut is the deerstalker, the pipe smoking and the drug taking, which
Gatiss
points out was always less important than the sheer humour in the
adventures.
Updates include Holmes having his own website, logically enough The
Science of
Deduction.
So
it’s safe to
deduce that Conan Doyles’ detective was always too good to be
tied down by
period features. He’s survived German versions, Second World
War escapades (Sherlock Holmes in Washington,
1943),
and most recently Guy Ritchie (not too shabby an effort by the mockney
director, as it happens).
007-influenced
Score
And
of course
the creators had the example of other recent and very successful
updates of
classics such as Clueless and Casino Royale. With inspired direction
by Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin,
Gangster No.1) and a sweeping
acoustic score (I spotted 007 composer David Arnold on the credits), Sherlock can now join the club.
After
the
screening, I nabbed 10 minutes with Steven Moffat and asked him how big
a
challenge it is to be putting brilliant words into the mouth of a
genius who
never says a dull thing.
‘Is
it a
challenge,’ he told me, ‘although I’ve
got more notice than Sherlock has. He
has to do it in real time and I can take several days. That’s
where I make up
the shortfall between my intelligence and his.
Holmes’
Deductions
‘Yes,
he must
always be clever and that’s one of things we’ve set
ourselves, Mark and I.
We’re very strict about this. In the original stories Doyle
does start to get a
wee bit lazy about the deductions, and later on he hardly makes any.
And we’ve
said, look we’re just going to have to think and think and
think of stuff you
can credibly do. When I was a kid that was the element that absolutely
transfixed me. And I got disappointed – “I see
you’ve come from Bristol,
you’ve got a
train ticket.” Come on, Sir Arthur, we want better than that.
‘So
we all go
around suggesting deductions to each other, Steve Thompson as well
[Thompson
has written episode three; Gatiss episode two]. My wife even came up
with a
brilliant one about how to deduce that someone is left-handed. So
we’ve got a
bank of deductions and if we get stuck we say, here have this one. We
did lift
some from the books. The one about the mobile phone [in Study
in Pink] is quite close to the deductions about the pocket
watch in The Sign of Four. I always
thought that was an incredibly beautifully written sequence, so I
borrowed that
one blatantly and with great joy.’
Sherlock Holmes
and Doctor Who
Moffat
made
some interesting points about the connections between Holmes and Doctor
Who.
‘They get it wrong at the very, very beginning of Doctor Who. The Doctor isn’t
the hero, he’s a senile old man, a git,
he’s not very nice. And [story editor] David Whitaker says,
Look, this isn’t
working. And I believe there’s a memo where he says
let’s make him make him
more like Sherlock Holmes, let’s make him a genius, difficult
but a genius.
‘So
Doctor Who
is deliberately patterned on Sherlock Holmes. When people ask me for a
comparison I always find myself saying a very odd thing, which is that
the
Doctor is more human. By which I mean that he is like an angle who
aspires to
be human, whereas Holmes is a human who aspires to be a god. So the
very things
the Doctor admires and embraces, the silliness, lovability and huge
emotions,
are exactly the things Holmes is running away from.’
‘So Long as It
Doesn’t Kill Me’
Of
his workload
writing six Doctor Whos, including
the Christmas special, and working on Sherlock,
Moffat said, ‘There is no way of balancing this. The last
year has been
extraordinary. I’ve had about four days off since Christmas.
I work every
weekend, get up early in the morning, go to bed late at night.
It’s
extraordinary, but it’s great fun too – so long as
it doesn’t kill me.’
For
pizzazz and
verve, Sherlock will surely be one
of
the best TV crime-dramas of the year, if not the best. Who needs the CSI
professional army of experts when you’ve got a British
amateur genius
like the man at 221b Baker
Street?
The game is afoot (or ‘on,’ as Holmes says in 2010).
Sherlock,
BBC1
Sunday July 25 9-10.30pm
7
Heaven
Crime
hounds
who haven’t sniffed out BBC
Radio 7 yet should investigate the channel immediately.
It’s
a
fascinating realm of great detective dramas and classic crime shows.
Recently
there’s been a pretty good serialisation of John
Harvey’s Inspector Resnick: Wasted
Years. Coming up in August is Ruth
Rendell’s The Fever Tree and Other
Stories (Saturday, 7 August, 11.30pm) and a whole week of PD
James’ stories
to mark the author’s 90th birthday, including Adam
Dalgliesh – Devices and Desires (Saturday, 7
August, 11pm) and
A Taste for Death (Monday, 9 August,
11am). The highlight of this week is an exclusive interview with the
grande
dame of detective fiction (keep an eye out for its broadcast time).
With
podcasts
and iPlayer it’s easier than ever to dip in at your
convenience. Give the
channel the once over here.
Forewarned is
forearmed
Lewis
recently did
so well for ITV1 that they’ve just commissioned another four
episodes with
Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox. It’s hard to argue with
nine-million viewers
for the last series, but it still leaves me cold, having a bland,
primetime
cop-show-by-numbers feel to it.
Author
Colin
Dexter, who created the Bafta-winning Inspector
Morse, from which this was spun, will still be consulted for
the Lewis episodes, but the new
shows lack
the original’s depth and air of remorse (sorry about the pun).
Garrow’s Law
The
Beeb has
just started filming a second series of Garrow’s
Law, the intriguing drama based on real legal cases from the
late 18th
century. It stars Andrew Buchan, Alun Armstrong and Rupert Graves and
was a
fascinating look at the life and times of pioneering barrister William
Garrow
and some very dodgy legal practices at a time when the Old Bailey was
something
of a judicial circus.
The Shadow Line
Christopher
Eccleston has also started filming The
Shadow Line for Auntie on the Isle of Man, in which he plays
a drug baron.
This is a six-part ‘noir thriller’ charting the
impact of an underworld figure
on a variety of characters. Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sir Antony
Sher,
Stephen Rea, Rafe Spall, Kierston Wareing and Lesley Sharp.
Written,
produced and directed by Hugo Blick (Marion
& Geoff). So no pressure on him, then.
Top Boy
C4 is also
riding the crime wave with Top Boy,
written by Ronan Bennett (who
penned the film Public Enemies),
about
young gang members in East London.
This four-parter follows Dushane, a 19-year-old street thug with
ambitions of
becoming a dealer, and is based on first-hand research by Bennett and
story
consultant Gerry Jackson, both Hackney residents. Cast yet to be
confirmed, but
it sounds like one to watch out for.
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