![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Despite the names Moffat and Gattiss on the credits, I didn't have high hopes for this, and I wasn't sure I wanted to spend 90 minutes on a Sunday night watching television. But I thought this was bloody brilliant!
It worked on so many levels. I did most of my Holmes reading back in the sixties, and last time I tried to read some of the stories, I found them too formulaic, but there are certain bits of the canon that are so well known, that the writers were able to riff off them. So, Holmes uses nicotine patches to help him think, and this is a three-patch problem, replacing both the pipe and the cocaine addiction. And then, they could use one's expectations and turn them on their head. The self-proclaimed "arch-enemy" turns out to be Mycroft, not Moriarty, who Holmes claims never to have heard of. (And that was Mark Gattis uncredited as Mycroft, wasn't it?) The bit where Mycroft contacted Watson by getting payphones to ring as he walked past was genuinely creepy.
Holmes, it would appear, has deduced that Watson needs more excitement after Afghanistan, not less. And Watson's limp is apparently psychosomatic, as he was shot in the shoulder, which I recall is reference to Conan Doyle apparently forgetting where Watson was wounded. But the limp also reminded me of House and that is so obviously based on Sherlock Holmes.
Loved the way that Holmes deduced that the victim had travelled up from Cardiff that day by checking the weather maps on his mobile to see where it had been raining. And the onscreen captions telling you what Holmes was noticing was a nice touch.
But one thought that does occur to me is that this must be an alternative version of the present where nobody has heard of Conan Doyle's Holmes, and Holmes has been so much a part of the popular imagination for the last century or so it would make a difference.
Definitely going to keep watching this one. Wonder if they're going to renew. Three episodes might not be enough.
It worked on so many levels. I did most of my Holmes reading back in the sixties, and last time I tried to read some of the stories, I found them too formulaic, but there are certain bits of the canon that are so well known, that the writers were able to riff off them. So, Holmes uses nicotine patches to help him think, and this is a three-patch problem, replacing both the pipe and the cocaine addiction. And then, they could use one's expectations and turn them on their head. The self-proclaimed "arch-enemy" turns out to be Mycroft, not Moriarty, who Holmes claims never to have heard of. (And that was Mark Gattis uncredited as Mycroft, wasn't it?) The bit where Mycroft contacted Watson by getting payphones to ring as he walked past was genuinely creepy.
Holmes, it would appear, has deduced that Watson needs more excitement after Afghanistan, not less. And Watson's limp is apparently psychosomatic, as he was shot in the shoulder, which I recall is reference to Conan Doyle apparently forgetting where Watson was wounded. But the limp also reminded me of House and that is so obviously based on Sherlock Holmes.
Loved the way that Holmes deduced that the victim had travelled up from Cardiff that day by checking the weather maps on his mobile to see where it had been raining. And the onscreen captions telling you what Holmes was noticing was a nice touch.
But one thought that does occur to me is that this must be an alternative version of the present where nobody has heard of Conan Doyle's Holmes, and Holmes has been so much a part of the popular imagination for the last century or so it would make a difference.
Definitely going to keep watching this one. Wonder if they're going to renew. Three episodes might not be enough.
