ELEMENTARY

Love, love, love Sherlock Holmes!  Much as I struggled to read the books, I adored Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George, which gave an insight into the real-life genius of author Arthur Conan Doyle.  So I watched the new TV drama series from a new perspective.  

The modern take on the original plots using new techniques like blogging and text messages shown as subtitles on screen was just brilliant.  

As for the casting, the chocolate-voiced, quirky, stylish Benedict Cumberbatch was perfect as Sherlock. However, that chocolate voice had a lot to answer for as it very nearly caused a cancelled interview for telly land: a throat infection meant Benedict was quite hoarse the night before he was due to grace our sofa. Thankfully, he eventually decided he was up to it and the script introducing him, rather than one of the series' writers, was quickly reinstated.

Martin Freeman's Dr John Watson, who had been invalided home from the war in Afghanistan, brought the series bang up to date.  They meet while Watson is looking for affordable accommodation in London and an old mutual friend introduces them.

As in the original Conan Doyle stories, Watson is the story-teller and, get this: his character writes up all the cases in his blog, just as Watson wrote up the cases that formed the original books.  But this Watson is horrified, at first, by Sherlock's ego and by the way he treats a dead body like a game.

Director, Steven Moffat, of Dr Who fame, said at the time: "Benedict is playing a cold, almost alien-like man in Sherlock and John Watson is the person who humanises him - they are a unit together.

"Whilst other detectives have cases, Holmes has adventures. Sherlock isn't a drama about police procedure - the police are involved but the cases themselves are Sherlock's and he's only interested in the strange ones."

However, it's not all doom and gloom.  Moffat continues: "The original books are funny. If you read the Sherlock Holmes stories, the interaction between the two main characters is always funny and I hope we've captured some element of that. Of course it's funny - he's a weird genius, not an ordinary genius."

I feel sure Mr Conan Doyle would have approved of both the casting and the modern interpretation of his stories, and his descendants seem to have given their approval.

But, whatever I've called this post, at no point in the original stories does Sherlock say "elementary my dear Watson" and these films remain faithful to that.  Maybe this will make more people want to read the original Conan Doyle books too?  Meanwhile, there’s a competition where have a go at writing something yourself here - click on The Contest.