No Shit. Sherlock

35 miles from my front door is London, California, supposedly named one early morning when tule fog had the opacity of latex paint.

            Some time in the mid-eighties I got on a Sherlock Holmes kick.  I couldn’t get enough of the famous Victorian detective.  I read all of Author Conan Doyle’s books and short stories, I rented every VHS movie I could find from The Seven Percent Solution to the tragically underappreciated Young Sherlock Holmes to Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective – but not the Basil Rathbone movies, I don’t care for the buffoonish Nigel Bruce as Watson - , and I read piles of Holmes stories written by other authors such as Isaac Asimov and Stephen King.

            Without looking it up I can tell you his address is 221B Baker Street, that his landlord is Mrs. Hudson, that he keeps tobacco in a slipper nailed to his mantel, that he met Watson at a hospital, that he was killed of by his creator and then brought back, that his stories originally appeared in a magazine named The Strand, that his brother is Mycroft and that Watson served in Afghanistan.

            I know why the dog didn’t bark.

            Some of the original stories I can name, also without looking them up; The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Adventure of the Dancing Men, and of course The Hound of the Baskervilles.  Not every story was a gem for me, just like not every movie satisfied my thirst for Holmes adventures, but more did than didn’t.

            Back in those same eighties, Jeremy Brett played Holmes on an English TV show that was broadcast over here on PBS.  A lot of Sherlockians view his portrayal as sacrilege, but I liked him.  Sure, he was a big ham who chewed scenery like a wood chipper, but the television shows were faithful to the source material; the original stories, and Edward Hardwicke’s Watson had a pair.  Brett my have actually given up his health to the role.

            I drifted away from the foggy streets of London and the…well foggy moors of the English countryside for awhile, and didn’t read or watch much Holmes stuff.  Then a couple of years ago a new television show based on Conan Doyle’s detective, titled simply Sherlock, debuted on PBS.  This time they put Holmes and Watson smack dab in the 21^st century.  Holmes is still a consulting detective but now he uses a Blackberry and has a website.  Watson writes his stories about Holmes on a blog instead of as serials in a magazine, but he still served in Afghanistan.

            Holmes is played by the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who I’ve only seen elsewhere in Spielberg’s War Horse.  With a name like Cumberbatch he sounds like he should be running the pub in Hobbiton.  He actually has been cast in The Hobbit but is playing not a hobbit but the voice of the dragon Smaug.

            Watson is played by Martin Freeman who I remember most as Authur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  He also starred in the British (original) version of The Office but will probably forever be remember after this December when he stars as the title character in The Hobbit.  I was going to write titular but I giggle when I say it outloud.

            This very Sunday Sherlock is returning to PBS for its second season.  It will be on at 9:00 on Masterpiece Mystery.  The slot formally held by Downton Abby.  I rented the first season on DVD and watched it with my boys.  I’ll be taping this season and watching the same way.  My oldest who is 15 has been banned from computer games for awhile, it’s like crack to him, and was banished to his Kindle Fire.  I know, tragic.  We blocked the web access on that device so he was forced to use it for reading.  All of Author Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories are free to download on Kindle so he is reading the same stories I read nearly 30 years ago.  I think it kind of nice a 15-year-old, surrounded by such a vast electronic buffet can still get some enjoyment reading stories that are over 100 years old.  Next up, H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.