Copyright © 2010 by Sarah Stegall
Sherlock
PBS, 9/10PM Sundays
“A Study in Pink”
Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Paul McGuigan
“The Blind Banker”
Written by Stephen Thompson
Directed by Euros Lyn
Warning: this review contains some spoilers. If you’d rather not know what the episode is going to include, bookmark this page and read it after viewing.
“The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street. Afternoon.” —Sherlock Holmes
Some literary icons cry out for rediscovery on a regular basis; such seems to be the case with Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Sherlock Holmes. These three British icons get “re-imagined” at least once every decade, with sometimes disastrous and sometimes illuminating results. The most recent reincarnation of the consulting detective of Baker Street falls in the latter category, as he sheds all remnants of his nineteenth century beginnings and emerges as a fully integrated citizen of the twenty-first century. In this update, from the men responsible for the latest incarnation of Doctor Who, we get a Sherlock Holmes stripped of the fusty Victorianisms and outfitted with the latest in GPS/PDA technology. This is not, as they say, your father’s Sherlock Holmes.
But it is, curiously enough, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. After almost a century of being re-invented by Hollywood, it is easy to lose sight of the original character under the impedimenta: the violin, the Persian slipper, the deerstalker hat, the syringe. From his first appearance in film, the emphasis has been on the lean ascetic, who solves cases with his mind instead of his fists. All too often, we are allowed to forget that, in his original description of Holmes, Watson describes him as a man of action, expert at boxing, single-stick, and other martial arts. Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes finally gave us a pugilistic Holmes in Robert Downey, Jr., but still left him mired in the foggy atmosphere of the Age of Steam. Sherlock creators Steven Moffat, who won the 2005 and 2007 Hugo awards for his writing on Doctor Who, and fellow Doctor Who alumnus Mark Gatiss bring Holmes all the way forward into contemporary London, where horse-drawn carriages and fog are replaced by double-decker buses and multicultural sidewalk crowds. Purists may clutch pearls and call for smelling salts, but I find this version intriguing, challenging, and most of all, entertaining. Like their Doctor Who, Moffat and Gatiss give us an energetic, fast-paced lead character with a sidekick who can hold his own.
“We’ve got ourselves a serial killer. Love those—there’s always something to look forward to.” —Sherlock Holmes
In the pilot, called “A Study in Pink” after the original “A Study in Scarlet”, we first meet Watson as he is recovering from the war in Afghanistan. (And may I just point out the irony of the fact that both the nineteenth century and twenty-first century versions of the doctor are wounded in Afghanistan? Some wars really never end.) He is depressed and his therapist does not understand him. A friend introduces him to Holmes. Before they are even properly introduced, Holmes is involving Watson in an investigation, by borrowing his cell phone. In a brilliant re-working of a famous Holmes and Watson dialogue, Holmes demonstrates his powers of observation and deduction using the cell phone, rather than Watson’s watch. Other dialogues update the sense, if not the actual words, of their conversations. A series of apparent suicides brings Inspector LeStrade (Rupert Graves, Ashes to Ashes) to ask for Holmes’ help, and the game, as we say, is on. (Not afoot, not these days.)
“Brilliant! Yes! Ah, four serial suicides and now a note. Oh, it’s Christmas.” —Sherlock Holmes
Holmes whisks a bemused but game Watson all over London—grimy, crowded, modern London, not the Charles Dickens postcard of previous versions. Modern technology comes into play, as well as modern attitudes—Metropolitan police and Scotland Yard detectives alike sneer at Holmes as a “freak”. But the anti-Mormon plot for the original crime in “A Study in Scarlet” would never play on American TV today, so Moffat changes it—unfortunately, for the worse. What was a thrilling revenge story could have been reworked to retain the passion and intensity of the original, but was instead altered into a very watered-down serial-killer story. God knows what Arthur Conan Doyle could have done with Jack the Ripper, but one would hope he would handle him better than Moffat handles what is now a very common, even boring, villain. The trouble with most serial killers is that they are relatively faceless, and Holmes as a character absolutely demands an enemy worthy of his mettle. The villain in “A Study in Pink” is not him; he is faceless, colorless, and unbelievable. Worse, he has no motive. The ending is a deus ex machina, with Watson saving Holmes’ life. It’s a very good thing we’re here for the characters, not the plot.
The second episode, “The Blind Banker” involves a series of crimes illustrated by mysterious spray-painted graffiti. Anyone who sees them dies within hours, but what’s the connection? Like the previous episode, it is up to Holmes to not only discover the links between the victims (most of whom die in locked rooms) but to elicit the crimes behind the crimes. This turns out to be a mysterious Oriental conspiracy known as the Black Lotus. Harking back to Conan Doyle’s love of the mysteries of the Orient, this episode features a Chinese escape-artist troupe, London’s Chinatown, and tongs. This could be another case of Othering another culture, something the British used to be prone to, but this one tries to be a little more sensitive. The heroine is a sensitive and cultured curator of Asian art, and due respect is shown the antiquities involved. And we learn that the faceless mastermind of the whole conspiracy is someone with the initial M. I don’t think it will turn out to be James Bond’s boss. Again, it’s a very good thing we’re here for the characters, not the plot.
” We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting, I don’t even know your name.” —John Watson
The Holmes of 1887 was a throwback to the Age of Reason. After decades of Victorian romanticism, with its emphasis on passion and sensitivity, Arthur Conan Doyle’s transgressive detective was a welcome change. He coolly lied to police, broke rules, concealed evidence. He could be arrogantly dismissive of rich and poor, the titled and the downtrodden. If he was a curmudgeon, at least he was fair. Most of all, he relied on reason, the first tool of man. Yet this version of the consulting detective is woefully out of date, and I don’t just mean in costume. For today’s audience, we need to see a Holmes as fully in tune with his times as the 1887 version. We still need to see a man who can think rings around everyone else, sneer at their intellectual shortcomings, and make us love him nonetheless. For this, we don’t need eccentricity, we need authenticity. Moffat and Gatiss bring us a Holmes with a distinct resemblance to Mr. Spock, but with charm. He flirts, almost unconsciously, with a dowdy lab assistant. He giggles. He dimples. He is honestly shocked when Watson manages to surprise him, as if his pillow were talking back to him. This would turn Holmes into a parody were it not for the brilliant work done by the man who plays him.
“I’m not a psychopath, Anderson. I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.” —Sherlock Holmes
If there is a more uncompromisingly British name than Benedict Cumberbatch available, I don’t know it. This British actor (Broken News, Atonement) not only embodies our every ideal of the physical Holmes—tall, sharp-gazed, dark haired, lanky, and fast-moving. He also brings a screen presence that renders everyone else invisible, as Holmes should. When Holmes is speaking, he is riveting. Well enough, but when he’s just sitting and staring, you can see the tension, as if he were a coiled spring. The other actors seem to step around him as if he were a ticking bomb. And sometimes he is—like his literary self, this Holmes literally springs into action. In one episode, he fights off a sword-wielding attacker and jumps from a seventh-story balcony into a sixth-story balcony. Cumberbatch brings a limber physicality to the role without turning Holmes into the pint-sized brawler of Ritchie’s screen version. Those long legs run and leap, but just as often Holmes loses fights with better-trained opponents. Which is fine, because we don’t want Superman, after all. What we want, and what Cumberbatch delivers, is a Holmes so far beyond the rest of us in powers of observation and analysis that any battle of wits is over before it starts.
“You’re an idiot. No, no, no, don’t be like that. Practically everyone is.” —Sherlock Holmes
I could not have imagined a better man to play John Watson than Martin Freeman, but for the wrong reasons. I remember him from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the pathetic everyman Arthur Dent, who never quite seems to figure out what’s going on. Like Watson, Dent is a pinball in a pinball machine, and things happen to him rather than him happening to things. But here, Freeman is playing Watson as an understated but very competent soldier, a man who is coming to terms with his wounding in the current war. This Watson is more than just a foil for Holmes: he is part brother, part subconscious. He has his own life, or tries to: in the second episode, his date with a cute receptionist becomes part of the unwinding of the plot. He is brave, resourceful, and smart. When the chips are down, he is a rock—unafraid of danger, willing to take a chance. In the first episode, his marksmanship saves Holmes’ life. In the second, he almost sacrifices his life to save a woman he’s known for two days. Since Watson is supposed to be the character with whom the audience identifies, it makes better sense to make him a man we can respect. Freeman is a revelation in his handling of this understated but vital role. I should not have been surprised, as he is merely bearing out a fundamental belief of mine: the best dramatic actors are always comedians.
Sherlock: How would you describe me, John? Resourceful? Dynamic? Enigmatic?
Watson: Late?
So, gone are the fusty customs of yesteryear, and here we are with 21st century wit. Holmes and Watson call each other Sherlock and John, abandoning the Oxbridge schoolboy customs of the nineteenth century. Cocaine syringes are out, nicotine patches are in—today’s more drug-savvy audiences are not likely to buy Arthur Conan Doyle’s assertions that cocaine is a stimulant to thought. The direction is more like MTV and less like BBC—split screens, onscreen text messages, quick cuts. The pace is faster, the images blare with color and movement. There is much more humor—jokes between Holmes and Watson, rude asides from Watson, and a running gag about how these roommates are perceived as a gay couple. Conan Doyle could never have gotten away with that. It’s almost thrilling to see Watson pulling out a 9mm instead of a Webley, to see Holmes figuring out Watson’s encrypted password in a matter of seconds. These stories are told more cinematically than the recent and much beloved series with Jeremy Brett, which adhered so closely to canon, ever did. The camera shows us, by picking out in a spotlight, a book here, a scratch there, that convey to us as to Holmes the information to solve a crime. It puts us sometimes more in Holmes’ head than Watson’s, but in this impatient age perhaps that is just as well. He’s still anti-social, brilliant, rational, and charming. We still love him.
Sherlock Holmes succeeds as a character because Arthur Conan Doyle made him larger than life, then made Watson life-sized to counter him. These two characters, being so fully enmeshed, can withstand re-interpretation better than most literary characters. Their success rests on the yin-yang of the cerebral and the emotional, the extrovert and the introvert, the conscious mind and the subconscious. As such, they are easy enough to bring into our world because these tropes are still with us. These are the strength of Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Unfortunately, the weaknesses of his creation are present in this Sherlock as well: poor plotting. The original stories are rather dull by today’s standards, and by any standards of storytelling lack imagination and warmth. All too often, a mystery is “solved” by Holmes leading us to someone who confesses in a long story. More contemporary audiences expect more involvement in the solution from the hero, and we get that in both of these cases. But the cases are… weak. One is a watered down serial killer with no discernable motive and hardly any screen time. The other is a watered down smuggling plot which turns on a hairpin. Literally, a jade hairpin. It’s a very good thing we’re here for the characters, not the plot.
Sherlock premiered in the UK this summer, drawing a total 9.2 million viewers. This would be great ratings on a regular US network, and I expect that these shows will draw good numbers here. The series includes only three episodes, the third of which airs next Sunday. After that, it will be a good long wait for the next three, which have been greenlighted already. But Holmes has waited over a hundred years for this resurrection, and can afford patience.