Sherlock!

[wealhtheow]

A while back I saw people start posting about a new Sherlock Holmes show, so I immediately downloaded the latest thing I could find.  I've loved Sherlock Holmes since I was a kid--I used to watch the old Rathbone episodes with my parents, and I reread the collected mysteries pretty much every year when I was younger.  Of course I wanted more Holmes!  This one was set in Victorian London, Watson was played by Ianto from Torchwood, and all the characters were astonishingly boring. 

Even worse, there were all sorts of clunky mistakes--for instance, in the introductory scene that's supposed to prove how clever Holmes is, he says he knows the corpse was poisoned because of a small discoloration on his knee.  Except...he's never seen the corpse before, and the corpse's entire body is under a sheet.  That kind of thing is so frustrating!  The costumes looked ok, but lack of witty banter and absolutely no weirdness on the part of Holmes made me deeply uninterested.  In the end it turned out there were sea monsters or something.  IDK.

  I was horrified to see that it seemed to be acquiring a fandom, because the show itself was so mediocre that I just couldn't bring myself to watch it.

But mercy was at hand!  Turns out fandom was talking about another Sherlock Holmes tv series that just came out, this one set in modern London.  And lo!  It was freaking awesome!  The first episode absolutely blew me away. 

I immediately liked Dr. Watson: he looks like an ordinary, stolid bloke, except that he's clearly got a lot going on behind his eyes.  Sherlock was even better--he looks rather like Methos from Highlander (my first fannish love), and the actor gives him a great combination of cold intellect and uncontrolled curiosity.  Plus, loved the shout-outs to Conan Doyle--Sherlock saying  the clue was obviously Rachel, and mocking the idea that an English woman would write the German word for revenge, beating a corpses to see how they bruise, using the same method of detection for an iPhone as for a pocket watch.  His detection methods felt real--I loved him feeling under the collar of a dead woman's coat to discover if there was a stiff wind.  And I loved the use of his incredible memory to figure out the best route to outrun a cab.  To me, "A Study in Pink" kept the fun bits of "A Study in Scarlet," while modernizing it.  I really do appreciate the change in the supporting cast to include plenty of women, from the awkward coroner to the to the snappish detective (whose treatment of Sherlock I really liked, because her watchful, wrathful reaction to his creepy tendencies and cruel honesty felt like a necessary counterpoint to Dr.Watson).  Also!  Dr. Watson is a badass!  Loved it.

The second episode, not so much. 

I loved seeing how John and Sherlock have begun to learn each other, compensate for each other, and lean on each other (John taking the check, expanding upon Sherlock's wild claims so they sound reasonable, Sherlock giving him his credit card without thinking about it).  Plus, I loved watching Sherlock interact with his old schoolmate Sebastian, how he clearly both plays into and is upset by the way people think he's freakish.  The twist--that the break in and vandalism of a bank was actually a means of communication--was cute.  Not so cute was the way this episode played into so many Orientalist tropes.  This ep wasn't even based on a Doyle story (though the cypher is apparently based on "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"), so there isn't even the defense of trying to adapt Victorian racism into the modern day.  It's the 21st century!  Stories about Chinese gangs don't have to have quiet, gentle and beautiful girls who only want to make tea who are killed by the violent Tongs who leave origami as their calling card and etc. The obvious cliches tainted the earlier scene of Sherlock fighting with a dude in Middle Eastern robes--it became less amusing for its juxtaposition with John's mundane shopping trip, and just one more hit of Oriental Other.  The only thing I liked about the plot was that upon seeing her date and his annoying friend start fighting with circus performers, Sarah (John's doctor-date) doesn't whine about his craziness ruining their date--she just wades in and starts whaling on their combatants.  So that was a nice reversal of my expectations.

 
Hopefully the third episode will be as good as the first, and I can repress knowledge of the second.
 

Comments

[j00j]

Um, yeah, I was intrigued by the first episode and then stopped in the middle of the second because of all the racism. I should finish it at some point and see if the third episode is any good.

[wealhtheow]

After the first episode added so many female characters--including two black female characters (two!)--I was really gobsmacked at the casual Orientalism in the second. It reminds me of Doctor Who's "Turn Left," actually, with that caricature of an Asian fortune teller. Is racism aimed at Asians not recognized in the UK or something?

Regardless of why, it was dissapointing!