Ad Absurdum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ad00absurdum) wrote2010-07-29 03:43 pm
ad00absurdum) wrote2010-07-29 03:43 pm
Entry tags:
"Sherlock" by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss
I think I should make "wonders of the Internet" a separate tag: yesterday I finally realised that BBC1 Sherlock is available on YouTube.
Watched it and thought it was actually very good. The series is a contemporary retelling of the classic ACD's stories. It's set in modern-day London, so Holmes e.g. sends text messages instead of telegrams and cabs are actually cars. And yet, despite all that, the series remains faithful to the original. The differences are pretty hard to miss, as the first episode intriguingly entitled Study in Pink, amply shows. The fact that Study in Scarlet practically stands on its head here (small example: "Rache" really means "Rachel", rather than German word for "revenge" and Mycroft is as thin as a lath) could leave Holmes purists fuming, but somehow it does not. The reason is the fact that the characters and the spirit of original stories are all here - perfectly preserved.
Hell, I'm a Holmes purist - never found an adaptation that I wouldn't complain about (well, maybe except Clive Merrison & Michael Williams's radio adaptation) - and even I like Sherlock. It's certainly better than the recent Guy Ritchie's film, which left me with the quite unforgettable image of midget!Holmes (no offence to RDJ). True, hearing thoroughly modern Watson and Holmes address each other by their first names took some getting used to, but as a bonus there's Rupert Graves as Detective Inspector Lestrade. I've got fond memories of seeing him in James Ivory's films.
Then there's Mrs Hudson with her "I'm your landlady, NOT your housekeeper" -> precious and Watson's repeated assertions that he's not Sherlock's date were worth a chuckle or two as well (and here we reflect on how the world has changed since the 19th century).
What I didn't particularly like was how even Moffat and Gatiss think and make Holmes say that he's a "highly functioning sociopath". Well, he's not. He's a pretty normal NT with a slight drug problem in books (here, he uses nicotine patches, which I thought was quite funny). Eh, even despite that, the series is definitely to be recommended.
There are also additional fun things to find on the net: http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/ and http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/
Aww, so nice to see how convergence culture works.
Watched it and thought it was actually very good. The series is a contemporary retelling of the classic ACD's stories. It's set in modern-day London, so Holmes e.g. sends text messages instead of telegrams and cabs are actually cars. And yet, despite all that, the series remains faithful to the original. The differences are pretty hard to miss, as the first episode intriguingly entitled Study in Pink, amply shows. The fact that Study in Scarlet practically stands on its head here (small example: "Rache" really means "Rachel", rather than German word for "revenge" and Mycroft is as thin as a lath) could leave Holmes purists fuming, but somehow it does not. The reason is the fact that the characters and the spirit of original stories are all here - perfectly preserved.
Hell, I'm a Holmes purist - never found an adaptation that I wouldn't complain about (well, maybe except Clive Merrison & Michael Williams's radio adaptation) - and even I like Sherlock. It's certainly better than the recent Guy Ritchie's film, which left me with the quite unforgettable image of midget!Holmes (no offence to RDJ). True, hearing thoroughly modern Watson and Holmes address each other by their first names took some getting used to, but as a bonus there's Rupert Graves as Detective Inspector Lestrade. I've got fond memories of seeing him in James Ivory's films.
Then there's Mrs Hudson with her "I'm your landlady, NOT your housekeeper" -> precious and Watson's repeated assertions that he's not Sherlock's date were worth a chuckle or two as well (and here we reflect on how the world has changed since the 19th century).
What I didn't particularly like was how even Moffat and Gatiss think and make Holmes say that he's a "highly functioning sociopath". Well, he's not. He's a pretty normal NT with a slight drug problem in books (here, he uses nicotine patches, which I thought was quite funny). Eh, even despite that, the series is definitely to be recommended.
There are also additional fun things to find on the net: http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/ and http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/
Aww, so nice to see how convergence culture works.