Sherlock Holmes Condemned to Learning, Growing and Hugging in Elementary

Mr Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first and only consulting detective, faces a peril far greater than any other he has faced in a long and distinguished career. Professor Moriarty, Irene Adler and even the giant rat of Sumatra itself are as Curly, Larry and Moe compared to the rack of fire on which the Columbia Broadcasting System and their nefarious allies in Great Britain, Sky Living, seem determined to roast the ne plus ultra of fictional detectives in their new series Elementary.

At first, the danger seemed slight. There is no real problem with modernizing Holmes – he is an archetype, a man for all seasons. The classic Basil Rathbone movies of the 1940s were moved to modern times, when Holmes moved from the Victorian peasoupers to the Churchillian beaches and landing grounds to face down the Nazi menace.

Bringing Holmes to 21st Century London is one of the many reasons why the current BBC Sherlock is the triumph that it is. The character remains constant though the times may change.

The move to New York and the sex change of honest Doctor Watson in Elementary are also permissible. The writers have to do something to make it different. The biggest danger, in the early stages, seemed to be the tin ear of writers who over-egged the English pudding.

Holmes refers to the tube, rather than the subway. He refers to the baseball team as the Metropolitans of New York, rather than the New York Mets. That’s because he’s English, you see.

However, once the game’s afoot, Holmes speaks fluent American. “I need you to send this to the lab,” says Holmes to a flatfoot. Only Americans consider the subjective “I need” as an imperative. How has Holmes picked this up but can’t call the subway the subway?

But sloppy writing is a flesh wound compared to the evisceration that the writers seem determined to inflict on the misfortunate, unsuspecting Holmes. Part of the backstory of Elementary is that Holmes is a recovering addict; Watson is a doctor hired to keep an around-the-clock eye on him. Fair enough.

What is not fair enough is the burgeoning plot development that Holmes will flower as a fully-rounded human being under Doctor Joan Watson’s loving ministrations. In the second episode, the sensitive viewer is appalled to discover that Holmes has taken something from his AA meetings, and is now a “better person” as a result.

Watson complements Holmes on the “progress” he’s making as a person, and this isn’t even the worst of it. As Watson retires to her boudoir, we see Holmes staring at his childhood violin that Watson found earlier. As Watson lies in bed, she hears the first plaintive scrapes and smiles at the thought of Sherlock Holmes getting back in touch with his soul and becoming a more rounded person. That we are spared stock imagery of flowers blossoming can only be the grace of a merciful God.

It’s not hard to plot the coming years. Love rears its ugly head and, by Season 5, Elementary has become the Brady Bunch as Holmes and Watson’s brood perform precocious feats of deduction to the delight of their parents and the agonized rictus horror of anyone with any taste whatsoever.

They could even have a Christmas special. The grandparents can meet for the first time since the wedding – Holmes's parents are played by Joanna Lumley and the guy who played Lord John Marbury in the West Wing, while Mr and Mrs Watson are George Takei and Barbara Bloody Streisand.

The eldest and most precocious of the children, Chet Holmes, deduces that Uncle Mycroft is running a covert op between the CIA and MI6, and hilarity ensues. Ricky Gervais will be cast against type as Mycroft – to keep things edgy, you know. Challenging assumptions.

Sherlock Holmes – learning, hugging and growing. What George Constanza expertly dodged for so long is to be the grim fate of the world’s first consulting detective. How he must long for the sweet release of the Reichenbach Falls.

The Triumphant Return of Mr Sherlock Holmes

It was hard not to grin like an idiot watching the updated Sherlock Holmes on the BBC on Sunday night. Updating an icon is a little like defusing a bomb – cut the wrong wire and it’s curtains.

Instead, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss successfully remained true to the spirit of the original while updating Holmes and Watson from Queen Victoria’s London to Boris Johnson’s.

It’s not the first time Sherlock Holmes has been updated, of course. The marvellous Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies were updated to the 1940s for reasons of patriotism and they worked, because the character stayed the same. There was nothing eminently Victorian about Holmes – he is the timeless archetype of the man who can figure anything out. He transcends eras in that sense.

How, then, to make Sherlock Holmes work in 21st Century London? The great city herself is a start. London looked wonderful in the first episode of Sherlock, and certain iconic London landmarks are used with great skill, not least the house at 221B Baker Street itself.

An Spailpín made it his business to pay it a visit on a trip to London once, being a fan of long-standing, and it was just wonderful to see Holmes and Watson fly out the door into the recognisable 21st Century night on Sunday.

Stephen Moffat has a gift for casting. After the triumph of Matt Smith as the eleventh Doctor Who, Moffat has hit the jackpot again with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson. The tense, coiled spring presence of Cumberbatch is reminiscent of Jeremy Brett, and no greater praise exists.

Watson is a triumph. Watson represents the plodding mortal against the Sherlockian superman, viewing Holmes with our eyes and ears. Martin Freeman’s glum, stoic and impossibly, glorious British Doctor Watson is a triumph. He is the mustn’t-grumble Britisher that took Quebec and held Rourke’s Drift. And he gets some terribly droll lines too.

The writing is another triumph. The dialogue crackles and, while the plotting was a little weak in the first episode, the primary goal was to establish the characters and these are now already carved in stone as a truly great Holmes and Watson.

The sublime nature of Mycroft Holmes’ entrance leaves little room for doubt that the next two episodes will be of sufficiently fiendish cunning that even the Sunday Game itself will have to take a back seat to the rejuvenated bloodhounds of Baker Street. The game is very much afoot.

Sherlock Holmes

Guy Richie has created a Sherlock Holmes for the UFC generation. He even has Holmes doing a spot of mixed martial arts himself, in what looks like a Victorian version of the UFC’s infamous octagon. This is Holmes for a generation that was raised on wrestling, comics and MTV.

It’s not that bad, really. It looks very stylish, the soundtrack is rather thrilling, and the direction is so kinetic that you don’t really have time to pause for breath as you’re rushed through the Gothic Victoriana.

There is precious little relation to the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, of course, but too much can be made of that. Watchmen clung religiously to the original text, and what a stinker that was. There’s nothing wrong with taking an original text and adding to it. The problem is that Richie’s Holmes takes away, and leaves a big hollow where the humanity used to be.

Take the Hound of the Baskervilles off your shelf – and if it’s not on your shelf, do yourself a favour and go out and buy it. An Spailpín will still be here when you get back – and read it again. You can hear the hound calling across those lonesome Yorkshire moors. It all feels so very real.

Nothing in Guy Richie’s Holmes feels real. The plot owes more to Dennis Wheatley than Conan Doyle, and the look of the film is too comic book. You never feel you’re in Victorian London. You never feel like you’re anywhere human at all.

Part of the problem, funnily enough, is Holmes himself. He has no real human qualities. He’s a caricature, much more so than he was in books or in previous celluloid characterisations. At one stage, watching Downey eat, I was reminded of him in Chaplin in 1992, when he does the fork dance. Perhaps Downey was channelling that in the absence of something else to get his teeth into.

The strongest performance of the movie – and nobody is more surprised than your correspondent – is Jude Law’s Doctor Watson. Law’s shallowness is such that he fails to shine as a star, but the man was born to play second banana. There is some good business between him and Downey, but it’s not nearly as good as the movie believes it is. Rachel McAdams is wasted in the picture. Shame.

Sherlock Holmes ends with exactly the same setup for a sequel as Batman Begins. Shamelessly so, in fact. And there may be a sequel, certainly. But in ten years’ time, the movie(s) will be seen for they are – grand for a trip to the movies, but ultimately disposable. While Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett still continue to shine as the definitive Holmes of big and small screen, respectively.

FOCAL SCOIR: Luke Kelly’s definitive version of the Rocky Road to Dublin is used twice in the movie, firstly during the UFC scene and secondly over the end credits. Nobody cheered or clapped while An Spailpín was in Cineworld on Parnell Street when it was played, either time. And that's sad.





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