Teaching Sherlock Holmes #1

As some of you may know, over the past few years I’ve been researching and writing my PhD in Film at the University of Warwick. One of the real benefits of this long and arduous process has been the opportunity to teach undergraduates, and to try to convey some of my enthusiasm for the subject.

I’m really excited about next week, when I’m assisting Michael Lightborne on his Adaptation course. He’s asked me to teach a two-week module on transmedia Sherlock Holmes. Planning this work has been very pleasant indeed: I’ve been trawling through all my DVDs, books and comics finding examples of Conan Doyle’s immense influence on culture.

Next week, I’m going to be showing my students Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon alongside Brett’s The Dancing Men, two very different riffs on the same source material. We’re also going to be running a workshop which will project three different reels of Sherlockian material, allowing the students to explore the space, making their own connections between different adaptations.

Putting together these reels has been tremendous fun. We’re using clips from the Rathbone films, the Brett series, the Wilmer and Cushing BBC episodes, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Murder by Decree, Without a Clue and the recent Cumberbatch and Downey Jr. versions. We’ll also have a slideshow running displaying illustrations, advertising material and pages from comic books.

In the second week, I’m going to be lecturing on a more focused case study, comparing the approaches of the Cumberbatch and Downey Jr. Sherlocks, and asking what prompted their creative decisions.

I think it should be a stimulating couple of sessions and I can’t wait to see what the students make of it all! Needless to say, I shall report back on our findings here at Squeezegut Alley…

Studies in Sherlock #2

I was surprised to learn that the BBC planned to release Sherlock‘s unaired pilot on the DVD release. The abortive 55 minute production had been the subject of much speculation amongst fans, fueled by the glimpses leaked in July. When I initially reviewed A Study in Pink, I criticized some sequences for seeming stretched and wondered if the story mightn’t have been better suited to the hour long format.

Well, I was wrong.

The Pilot (directed by Coky Giedroyc) is an enjoyable watch but in many ways lacks the verve and invention of the broadcast version. While its plot is essentially the same (only really diverging in the last act), the Pilot feels more pedestrian. In the documentary Unlocking Sherlock, producer Sue Vertue explains that the investment of more money from the BBC and PBS allowed them to use more expensive cameras second time around. Visually, then, the broadcast version is richer and more dynamic.

While all of the principal actors and much of the memorable dialogue is carried over from the Pilot, its pace and editing are notably different. One of my criticisms of the broadcast A Study in Pink concerned director Paul McGuigan’s hyperactive action sequences. There is nothing like this in Goydriec’s version, but this means the Pilot has none of the interesting visual flourishes that made Sherlock so distinctive (no onscreen texting, for example).

It does have a rather silly moment in which Sherlock stands on a rooftop looking like Batman, however. I’m glad they lost that.

I'm glad Sherlock lost the forensics gear as well.

What I missed most of all were the elegant visual layers and dissolves which made London so mysterious in McGuigan’s broadcast version. The Pilot fails to depict John’s discovery of this exciting new world, most notably in the drive to Lauriston Gardens. Similarly, the denouement (which takes place at Baker Street in the Pilot) makes John’s heroic act slightly more obscure.

And of course there’s no Mycroft or Moriarty. Both elements stand out in the broadcast A Study in Pink as precursors to the series finale and, as written, promise considerable drama (I am less confident about the execution of this, but that’s another discussion). They’re not missed in the Pilot, but A Study in Pink is richer for their addition.

In a typically fatuous comment piece, Mark Lawson described the Pilot as a ‘disaster’. It’s certainly not that. Moffat’s writing is excellent, and the performances of Cumberbatch, Freeman, Rupert Graves and Phil Davis are confident and compelling. Watching it through, however, one can see why the decision was made to reshoot and how A Study in Pink benefited from its extended running time. It’s a fascinating exercise in comparison!

Sherlock: The Great Game review

Contains spoilers! You can read my reviews of A Study in Pink here and The Blind Banker here.

You might remember that last week’s Sherlock left me pretty down in the mouth. In particular, I was concerned that we weren’t getting enough plot to fill the 90-minute format, and that the episode made Sherlock and John into generic 21st century crimefighters. To a large extent, Mark Gatiss’ The Great Game showed a return to form, but it also left me feeling very uncertain about the show’s future.

Unsurprisingly, Gatiss craftily steered his plot around Canonical landmarks – combining material from The Bruce-Partington Plans and The Final Problem, slyly nodding toward The Five Orange Pips, A Scandal In Bohemia, A Study in Scarlet, The Musgrave Ritual and The Empty House. As we’ve come to expect, there were nods to the Rathbone films as well, with The Golem an homage to The Hoxton Creeper from The Pearl of Death and Moriarty’s puzzles for Holmes recalling The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Rondo Hatton as The 'Oxton Creeper

Structured as a series of consecutive cases, these puzzles allowed us to see Sherlock and John at work in number of different environments. This was just what I wanted last week’s episode to do – give us a sense of how the two men work at different cases together, what roles they play, and how this shapes the rhythm of their lives together.

Cumberbatch and Freeman were on typically fine form, and given lots of nice character moments. John’s anger and frequent embarrassment at Sherlock’s dispassionate method were especially well performed. I was pleased to see Rupert Graves return and, given my previous reservations, was surprised at how effective Mark Gatiss was in his scenes as Mycroft. Stripped of the ‘is he Moriarty?’ conceit, Gatiss was suitably condescending. Una Stubbs was given just the right amount of screen time, but I felt sorry for poor Zoe Telford. I hope she’ll be written better in the next series.

I liked that Gatiss gave Sherlock some Victorian dialogue. You’ll remember I wasn’t keen on changing “the game is afoot” to “the game is on”. Cumberbatch is a good enough actor to make antiquated language sound appropriate for his Sherlock. So it was nice to hear him saying things like “ten-a-penny” and “meretricious”! Conversely, there were some updated elements that jarred – was I the only one to cringe at Cadogan West’s translation to ‘Westy’?

Paul McGuigan’s direction had settled down a lot from the first episode. I was especially impressed by the fight in the planetarium, which counterpointed Holst and Peter Davison’s dulcet tones in a blur of light and colour. The shot of West’s body carried away on the train was another nice composition. This episode’s score was excellent as well, with David Arnold and Michael Price’s brooding strings really adding to the menace.

Well, except for at one point. You know, the point where the woman off Peak Practice said “Moriarty” and the music went DOOM-DAH DOOM-DAH DOOM-DAH!!!

Ah, Moriarty. You really messed everything up, didn’t you? Why did the programme makers feel the need to use such an exaggerated effect? Surely Sherlock knew it was Moriarty who was behind all of this? We certainly did.

Andrew Scott as 'Jim' Moriarty.

Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, but I can’t really see any connection between Conan Doyle’s master criminal and the hyperactive psychopath played by Andrew Scott. His flamboyance and aggressive craziness reminded me of John Simm’s Master, another poorly written pantomime villain. I suppose the intention was to contrast Cumberbatch’s measured sociopath with an unpredictable sadist. Unfortunately, Scott’s shouting and gurning made him seem like a kids TV presenter. I think a quieter actor would have been genuinely frightening, as opposed to the strained viciousness that we got. I didn’t believe in Moriarty’s silly childhood murder backstory and I hated his affected way of speaking. “Gotcha!”, “Boring!”, “Teensy!” This was pitifully bad writing.

So I’m left with decidedly mixed feelings about the future of the series. While much of The Great Game was good, I suspect the next series is going in a direction which will severely test my patience. I really do think this could be a classic interpretation of the tales, especially given the two wonderful leads. Moffat and Gatiss would do well to learn from Conan Doyle. His Professor Moriarty never appeared as a character in the Holmes stories. He was only ever talked about, a shadowy presence described in flashback. That’s why he’s been so pervasive as a character, that’s what makes him unique. If Sherlock is to fulfil its potential, it must be clever about what it retains of Conan Doyle, and what it discards. Otherwise, it will end up looking like every other show on television, a victim of its own iconoclasm.

Sherlock: The Blind Banker review

Some slight spoilers ahead!

Like the introductory episode, The Blind Banker wove a number of Sherlockian references into its story. The cipher came from The Dancing Men, the Chinese pottery from The Illustrious Client, the university acquaintance client from The Musgrave Ritual, and the tattooed secret society from The Valley of Fear.

Unlike that introductory installment, however, this was an unholy mess.

Most of what interested me about A Study in Pink was absent. There, the updating was exciting, a playful yet recognizable adaptation of its Conan Doyle source material. Last night’s scattergun approach failed to hit its mark. While Steven Moffat’s love for the characters and their world had been very evident, Stephen Thompson’s script was just a lazy runaround featuring some blokes called ‘Sherlock’ and ‘John’.

Crucially, the cracking of the cipher was muddled and boring. In Conan Doyle’s The Dancing Men, a household is terrorized by the appearance of tiny chalked stick figures. Their child-like aspect increases their sinister effect and, as the story progresses, we follow Holmes’ deciphering of them. Here, the substitution of graffiti representing ancient Chinese numerals was less threatening and less involving. The deciphering process was obfuscated and the messages’ contents were banal. This series is in trouble if its adaptations are less dramatic than their source material.

The Dancing Men

Oh, and BBC? Don’t try to do ‘streetwise’ faux-Banksy characters. You just make us cringe.

All of the secondary characters were roughly sketched, there for exposition and little more. What happened to Soo Lin’s admiring co-worker, for instance? I kept wanting the episode to delve into the Chinese underworld a little further, to give us some sense of their place in the community. As it was, Chinatown was used simply as exotic backdrop, Orientalism at its worst.

Keeping Chinatown in the background

There was some nice character business between Cumberbatch and Freeman, but nothing that built on what we’d seen last week. The series’ reluctance to explore the friendship’s dynamic in favour of superficial banter was disappointing. The introduction of Sarah (Zoe Telford) was equally unrealized, her roles as feisty female and damsel-in-distress seeming uncomfortably contrived.

Even taken as pulp adventure, this interminable episode simply didn’t thrill. I think this speaks to a problem with the series’ format. You can’t be sub-Messiah one week and sub-Indiana Jones the next. That just prevents the audience from understanding the limits and rationale behind this fictional world, a massive problem for an update of this kind.

Don’t even get me started on the ridiculous villains and cack-handed Sax Rohmer finale. If you want to see that kind of story told effectively, go and watch the Tom Baker Doctor Who serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The inclusion of Moriarty at the conclusion was unintentionally laughable, more Dr. Claw than Napoleon of Crime.

As you can tell, I was bitterly disappointed by The Blind Banker (a title that promised much that it failed to pay off). The high expectations set by A Study in Pink have been significantly lowered. Still, I do like Mark Gatiss as a writer, so let’s hope that next week’s The Great Game shows a firmer hand at the reins. Otherwise, we may see a potentially great Holmes and Watson undone by the most dangerous enemy of all. Lazy scriptwriters.

Sherlock: A Study in Pink

This review contains spoilers.

A Study in Scarlet is one of the least adapted stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon. Like most of Conan Doyle’s novel-length adventures, its bipartite structure resists dramatization. The first half of the story depicts Holmes’ investigation; the second half, the murderer’s confession, the tale of a past wrong avenged. Consequently, there are very few screen portrayals of Holmes and Watson meeting for the first time.

A Study in Scarlet, 1887

So I was surprised that Steven Moffat’s script for last night’s Sherlock followed its Doylean source material so closely. We got John’s meeting with Stamford, Sherlock’s beating of corpses, his deductions around Afghanistan, John’s gradual comprehension of his room-mate’s profession, the murder in Lauriston Gardens, the fruitless chase after a cab, the identification of the cabbie as the murderer, and his terrifying choice of poison pills. Also, I failed to notice a particularly skilful pun on the word ‘ring’, noted by Tom Sutcliffe in today’s Independent here.

For the obsessive aficionado (that’s me), there were a wealth of Holmesian in-jokes, often playing with Conan Doyle’s notorious inconsistency. So we found out that Mrs. Turner lived down the road from Mrs. Hudson, that Sherlock knew a waiter called Billy, and that John’s wandering war wound was a symptom of his PTSD. There were more straightforward quotations as well, like naming one victim James Phillimore and using the wonderful telegram from The Creeping Man : “Come at once if convenient – if inconvenient come all the same S.H.” Sadly, these quotations were sometimes diluted by the updating. Slice it where you like, “The game is on” just isn’t as dramatic as “The game is afoot”!

Like the Universal Rathbone-Bruce films which inspired this series, A Study in Pink boldly stole and reframed detail from the original adventures. However, it also demonstrated its awareness of previous adaptations. In interview, Moffat and Gatiss have mentioned their love for The Spider Woman (1944) and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). From the former comes the idea of serial suicides, from the latter Mycroft’s recasting as a sinister representative of the government.

The Spider Woman, Roy William Neill, 1944

I was especially impressed by the two central performances, and am excited to see how they will develop over the coming weeks. Freeman was intelligent and empathetic as John Watson. By structuring his entry into Sherlock’s world as a move from ennui to action (wonderfully realized in the transference from crutch to service revolver), the script gave us a compelling reason for his becoming part of this partnership.

Cumberbatch is potentially one of the great Sherlocks. Physically perfect for the role, the planes of his face convey the detective’s strangeness and inscrutability. Importantly, though, Cumberbatch isn’t a cold fish. We frequently see Sherlock excited and amused, allowing us to understand his passion for the grotesque. Also, I covet his coat enormously.

Unsurprisingly, Moffat chose to leave the second part of A Study in Scarlet alone. However, this left the motivation of the murderer weak. While Conan Doyle’s cabbie was full of pathos, Moffat’s is an arrogant psychopath bordering on cliche. It was difficult to believe the connection to Moriarty, which came off seeming like a tenuous attempt at arc-building.

While I liked the use of Mycroft, I had a major problem with the casting of Mark Gatiss. Maybe it’s just that I can’t separate him from The League of Gentlemen in my head, but I felt that his performance was horribly arch. It was as though he was playing ‘sinister’ in a comedy skit. And giving Gatiss the final line of the episode smacked of self-indulgence, which certainly wouldn’t have been the case if they’d just used another actor.

Some of the hyperactive editing and emphatic ‘whooshing’ on the soundtrack during action sequences (I’m thinking of the chase after the cab) was annoying, and I think this might have been better as a 60-minute episode. Nevertheless, I don’t want to end on a negative note. The next two episodes take The Dancing Men and The Bruce-Partington Plans as their starting points, both of which are much better stories than A Study in Scarlet. I’m looking forward to seeing how the series progresses!

I’ve chosen to avoid talking about the updating of the character in this review as I’ll be writing a guest blog on the subject for the indispensable Sherlocking later this week. Please do let me know what you thought about A Study in Pink by leaving a comment below!

Cumberbatch and Freeman interview

More goodies from Den of Geek! First, an entertaining interview with the new Sherlock and John (it’s difficult for me not to type ‘Holmes and Watson!’). Both men discuss their roles intelligently, and there’s a fine sense of camaraderie between them. It is especially nice to read of Cumberbatch’s attachment to Conan Doyle, and his reverence for Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett. The interview can be found here.

And then there’s this informative report, which contains the best description I’ve read so far of the new 221B set. I particularly liked the mention of the microwave, which ‘houses a beaker full of eyes’! There’s also some slight criticism of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes from Moffat… You can read it here.

Moffat and Gatiss interview

Den of Geek have put up a fascinating interview with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. In it, they discuss their rationale for updating Sherlock Holmes, make comparisons to James Bond, and reveal that Martin Freeman beat a certain Matt Smith to the role of Watson…

You can read it here.

A Study in Sherlock (part two)

Hello everybody! Things have been happening in the world of Sherlock since I posted last week. The BBC have set up a programme website here, which is carrying two new videos. The first of these is a new trailer for the series; the second, a behind-the-scenes interview with Moffat and Gatiss.

Let’s look at the trailer first.

The camera turns around Sherlock as we hear Watson asking, “Who are you? What do you do?” It’s a nice moment of introduction, emphasizing the detective’s eccentricity. It’s interesting that this series forces us to relearn what we assume we know about the Holmes character. Note too Sherlock’s handy pull-out magnifying glass, a nice updating of a classic image!

Then a lovely line-reading from Cumberbatch: “This is his hunting ground. Right here in the heart of the city.” It’s a fine authoritative voice, full of dramatic weight.

Sherlock dismissively calling Watson “an idiot” begins a sequence that plays around with our expectations of the partnership. We have Sherlock making introductions to Lestrade: “This is my friend, John Watson.” As Lestrade smirks, and puts an unwanted emphasis on the word ‘friend’, Watson swiftly corrects him: “Colleague.” My guess is that this comes after the awkward discussion at dinner that we saw in the last trailer.

Perhaps the best moment of the trailer is Sherlock snapping at Lestrade, “You were thinking. It’s annoying,” as Watson casts his eyes down in embarrassment.

Most surprising moment? The explosion that knocks 221B’s windows in and throws Sherlock to the floor. It’s the first real bit of action that we’ve seen so far, the emphasis in the trailers being firmly upon the detective’s abrasive relationship with the police, as seen through the eyes of Watson. Who’s responsible for that explosion, I wonder? Some ‘deep organizing power’, perhaps?

Here too is the Moffat and Gatiss interview. I shall let those august gentlemen speak for themselves, pausing only to observe that this clip gives us some tantalizing glimpses of a marvelous 221B set!

Over to you, dear readers. Have these clips stirred your blood, or turned your stomach? Your comments, please!

A Study in Sherlock

Thanks to Sherlocking, I got my first decent look at the new Moffat and Gatiss Sherlock yesterday. After thinking about the look of the show last week, it’s very exciting to finally get a sense of its tone. Here’s the video in question, which looks as though it was made to sell Sherlock abroad:

The footage begins with two short sequences introducing us to Holmes and Watson.

Holmes is beating a corpse in a morgue to determine bruising post-mortem. It’s a grisly moment, but lifted faithfully from Conan Doyle’s introduction to the character in A Study in Scarlet. Where we depart from Doyle is in the assertion of Sherlock’s attractiveness. Rather like Moffat’s Eleventh Doctor, Sherlock feigns obliviousness to this kind of attention.

Watson, returned from service in Afghanistan, is having trouble adjusting to life in London. Meeting an old acquaintance for lunch leads him to take rooms with Sherlock, who warns Watson of his predilection for playing the violin and keeping moody silences. Again, I could be describing the first chapter of A Study in Scarlet.

A nice scene of the two over dinner swiftly raises and dismisses the question of Holmes’ sexual preference, while we discover that the police distrust his close relationship with crime.

In the following ‘behind-the-scenes’, Gatiss talks about their desire to move away from ‘Victorian pastiche’ and to bring back a focus on the characters. We often forget that the Holmes stories were written over a period of some fifty years, and that their magazine publication and changing illustrators kept the character seeming contemporary. Very few illustrators of the 1920s stories kept Holmes in a fetishized Victorian environment.

Holmes on the blower, from 'The Three Garridebs' (1924)

I mentioned, in my post last week, that I was interested in how the series would deal with technology. How useful is a man with a brain like a computer in the age of the internet?

Wisely, the programme makers have fully engaged with this. What lifts this Sherlock above everyone else’s iPhone is his ability to make ‘leaps of logic’. Modernization has another effect: while this is London in the present day, and a recognizable Baker Street, it is also one that has (unsurprisingly) any reference to Sherlockian tourism erased.

The series deals with this knowingly. Look at the positioning of camera for Watson emerging from Baker Street tube, so that the bronze Holmes statue is just out of shot. Likewise, the decision to put 221B above ‘Mrs. Hudson’s Snax and Sarnies’. Anyone who has made a pilgrimage to Baker Street, and been throroughly disappointed, will smile ruefully at that touch.

What has surprised me most is the way in which this first episode, allegedly entitled A Touch of Pink, draws upon that first Holmes adventure A Study in Scarlet. And not just in terms of the title – those of you who know the novel may have noticed clues which suggest crime and murderer are also very similar.

Well, over to you. Is this, as Moffat claims, ‘Sherlock Holmes restored’?

“I hear of Sherlock everywhere…”

Digital Spy has just released the first publicity photos for the BBC’s forthcoming modernized Sherlock, brainchild of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. The images don’t tell us much, but deduction is all about the little details, isn’t it? So, first image. Standard Holmes and Watson pose, in front of the door of their Baker Street lodgings.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman

Benedict is suitably gaunt and long-faced while Freeman is pleasingly solid. These are roles that have been reinterpreted more than any others in film, and yet those basic physical shapes have stayed the same. Similarly, the updating of the costumes means that Holmes is looking rather trendily bohemian while Watson’s jacket has the look of the hard-working GP. Perhaps most noticeable is a lack of moustachio on Freeman’s top lip. Well, well, we can’t have everything, though it is a shame after Jude Law’s pretty decent soup strainer:

Law sporting hair on upper lip

What’s particularly striking about the BBC’s new image is that wiring snaking up the wall on the left. It’s the kind of detail that used to be the bane of set dressers for Victorian productions (one such howler can be found in Granada’s The Second Stain, when Jeremy Brett climbs up to examine a curtain rail and electrical wiring is clearly in shot). Here the modernity of the setting is being foregrounded. It leads me to wonder what part technology will play in this series. What is this new Holmes’ advantage over modern criminological practice?

Our second image gives us a clue as to the way this version intends to riff on Conan Doyle.

The game's afoot

It’s the era of the action Holmes. Or at least, that’s the direction this seems to be suggesting. It will be interesting to see how this matches up to Guy Ritchie’s fairly successful stab at Holmes and Watson as Victorian dynamic duo. As an image, this seems too reminiscent of the way the BBC markets Doctor Who. Also, Martin Freeman is concentrating far too hard on running. But I do like the way their cardigans look like waistcoats. Nice touch.

No word as to when this will be on the telly yet, but there are mutterings of August/September.