NotesFromTheRocket Escape Pod

In 1887, a little known Scottish physician named Arthur Conan Doyle created whatis arguably one of the most iconic characters in modern literature, the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. In the 4 novels and nearly 60 short stories, Holmes is portrayed as super-humanly brilliant in his powers of observation and mental agility, yet near neurotic and borderline autistic in his behavior, words and deeds.

Using acute powers of observation, a lifetime of studying the human condition (while not actually participating in the human condition himself), and an analytic, almost machine-like intellect Holmes is able to deduce means, motive and method of crimes with little more to go on then a piece of clay stuck in the sole of a shoe.

While Holmes was brilliant and quirky, Dolye also portrayed him as quick to fight, meglomaniacal, a drug addict, and stricken with bouts of depression and self-isolation. He clearly pays a mental price for his abilities. 

Holmes popularity brought him to life on stage in 1899, but it was in 1921 that the first of hundreds of representations of Holmes was brought to the screen - and it is those films that really brought Sherlock Holmes and his companion John Watson to American audiences. They also brought with them representations of Holmes that were sanitized and intellectualized to appease the squeamishness of early Hollywood. It is those images of Basil Rathbone that stuck with Holmes: stuffy, pipe smoking (tobacco only), and with an cap and cape. (None of those elements - except for a pipe, which was never filled with tobacco, were in the original stories.)

In recent times, the closest screen incarnation to Holmes was portrayed in the 1980’s by Jeremy Brett over a four year run. Brett read most of the stories and studied the character - and while he got most of the mannerisms and affectations right for once, something was still missing. Brett’s Holmes was…dull.

As time went on, the character of Sherlock Holmes was ripe for parody and satire. Sherlock Homes and Doctor Watson had fallen onto the back pages of literary and cinematic history, resurrected as the butt of a joke whenever it was required.

Then, almost simultaneously, two unlikely creators summoned Sherlock back from long, strange silence: 

Guy Ritchie, of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” fame, and Stephan Moffat, the current show-runner for the BBC’s Doctor Who (another character who was based on Holmes) re-imagined the character of Sherlock Holmes nearly simultaneously. (Ritchie at the tail-end of 2009, and Moffat in the summer 2010.) And in both cases, the character of Holmes was left nearly intact.

While Ritchie’s paring of Robert Downey, Jr as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson was clever, occasionally brilliant and - most importantly - funny and decidedly not dull, it is Moffat’s re-imagining, “Sherlock,” that leaves your jaw on the floor.

Moffat took a leap that few others in the previous 100 years did with the character of Holmes: no longer content with retelling the same stories in Victorian England, Moffat placed Holmes and Watson in modern day London. The results were spectacular at every level you can measure. Casting Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson was inspired, brilliant and - again - not dull. Cumberbatch portrays Holmes as socially inept, as confused by modern society as much as he is it’s expert student, and self-destructive in the extreme. Freeman’s Watson is a flawed man, mentally damaged by the Afghanistan war and left with little self-esteem and locked out of the medical profession he so dearly loves. 

What is so remarkable about Moffat’s retelling is how bizarrely similar 1887 and 2010 are - and Moffat mines those similarities to their core. 1887’s Watson was in the Anglo-Afghan war, writes about Holmes in his diary (which he eventually publishes to get needed funds), and enables Holmes in his abuse of drugs, self-starvation and other destructive behavior. 2010-2012 Watson was in the Afghanistan war, writes about Holmes in his blog (which becomes insanely popular, increasing the clientele to Holmes’ consulting detective agency) and helps Holmes kick his tobacco habit with “the patch.” 

The stories themselves are lift directly from Doyle’s rich library of stories, with slight subtle difference to transport them from the late 1800’s to the early 2000’s. These slight changes are mocked in the titles of the stories themselves - “A Study in Scarlet,” becomes “A Study in Pink,” for instance. Here too, the preservation of the 100 year old story lines demonstrates that even though we have faster, better, slicker technology and dress spiffier, very little has changed between then and now.

If you haven’t seen “Sherlock” yet, stop reading this and go get the BluRay’s of the first two seasons of the series, or digitally stream them from Netflix or Amazon. It’s quite possibly the best series on television right now - and given the competition out there (Homeland, Boardwalk Empire, and even Moffat’s own Doctor Who), that’s quite a feat.

…oh, and Andrew Scott’s Moriarty? Yeah…you really need to see that.