No Sh*t, Sherlock

[thebitterguy]

So Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are doing a contemporary Sherlock Holmes series called Sherlock.

Should be interesting. At least they've got a war in Afghanistan for Watson to be injured in. Funny, because over on Kung Fu Monkey, John Rogers took a small swipe at Moffat's creation (at the end of the quote).

Alan Scott: Also, some of us haven't been exposed to your Holmes/Watson rant--and if we didn't want to hear you rant, we wouldn't be reading your blog.

Commenter ajay pretty much nailed it: Absolutely. At the beginning of "A Study in Scarlet", Watson has just returned from Afghanistan with a nasty case of PTSD. He went straight into the Army from medical school, and straight to Afghanistan the next year. So he can't really be more than 26 or so when the novel starts - Victorian doctors went to university at 18 or so and studied for five or six years. And Holmes is about the same age if not younger - he's studying at the university, he's had no previous job that anyone mentions, and Watson doesn't describe him as significantly older than himself.

John Watson is a twenty-six year old combat hard-ass with mujhadeen shrapnel buried in his leg (or shoulder, depending on the story), not some foppish fuckwit with a bowler hat. Sherlock Holmes is your substance-abusing perpetual grad student solving cases for the London underworld/working class that the cops won't touch. THAT'S why everybody fucks up Holmes and Watson including, probably, my favorite writer in the world.

About two years ago I was developing that version of Holmes and Watson with a director to do a TV pilot, and our agents correctly argued that no network was really looking for that. However, it's my fondest wish to someday do that show.

Oh, and they're women. Did I mention that?

Comments

[lynne-h.livejournal.com]

Its Moffat and Gatiss so I'm prepared to give it a go. It can't be as bad as the god-awful version the Beeb did of Hound of the Baskervilles with Richard Roxborough as Holmes, or the ill-advised "new" one they did a couple of years ago with Rupert Everett.

[thebitterguy]

I've never been a huge fan of Holmes, so I've never seen a contemporary version before. Hopefully it'll be well done.

[rentagurkha.livejournal.com]

What a terrible idea.

The problem with moving Holmes to the modern day is that Holmes makes no sense in our era. In Victorian times, you could place the cultured, intelligent gentleman against the blue-collar uneducated beat cop and get stories out of the idea that said gentleman could outwit criminals that were beyond the intellect of PC Plod. But Holmes just doesn't work when the police use profilers and forensics and (in the UK) CCTV cameras.

[thebitterguy]

So you don't think Rogers' idea to go with "won't solve" rather than "can't solve" will work?

[rentagurkha.livejournal.com]

Which would be what? I think to make it credible you'd almost have to make them "mob detectives" or something similar--it's not that the cops won't investigate the crimes, but rather that they work for people who want to keep the cops out of it.

It's potentially an interesting idea, but once you've gone that far you've got less connection to Holmes and Watson than House does.

[lynne-h.livejournal.com]

Most classic detective shows wouldn't work now precisely because of those things. Even Columbo, which made a point of bringing hi-tech, brand new gadgets in as plot devices, wouldn't survive CCTV and modern forensics.

Mind you, if they went down a "Life on Mars" route, you could still have the dumb, plodding copper routine, but sadly that would require it to be set in the 70s.