Seriously?
CBS orders contemporary Sherlock Holmes show.
Elementary is described as a modern take on the cases of the pipe-smoking private eye created by Arthur Conan Doyle, with Sherlock now living in New York City.
why CBS would even bother going against something as strong as the BBC’s Sherlock.
Because they wouldn’t be going against it. 99.9% (or more) of CBS viewers will have never seen BBC’s Sherlock, nor will they.
221B Canal St. doesn’t quite have the same kind of ring to it.
Just caught up to the end of this season. Superb ending.
To add to my previous comment:-
This is probably re-inventing the wheel, I know, but not for the first time it’s occurred to me that Sherlock Holmes was actually the first superhero.
Check it: it’s not really mystery or crime fiction, because there’s nothing for the reader to unravel, it’s all deus ex machina stuff as I said above. Everything’s a set piece that only someone with Sherlock’s abilities could solve.
It’s all about the warm feeling of having someone reliable, an absolute rock, with godlike power, who will do the right thing and always win in the end, and who is “on the side of the angels” (and we breathe a sigh of relief that he’s on our side against baddies of equal power).
IOW, it’s mythical-level fiction, dressed up as detective stories. And the makers of this series have absolutely nailed that.
Hercules says hi.
OK, ok, the first modern superhero is what I meant. A “science hero” in Alan Moore’s apt definition :)
The genre is “superhero tale”, thinly disguised as detective fiction.
Sure, but still far from the first. Lots of previous superheroes in post-classical times. Even Holmes is just a rip-off of C. Auguste Dupin from, what, 1841. Perhaps Dupin is not a superhero, though he is a genius, and really was the world’s first fictional consulting detective, though he would have eschewed the term, being an aristocratic amateur.
OK, so you have stuff by Verne, for example. Nemo is a great deal more of a sci-fi supervillain than Moriarty, and Verne wrote about him in 1870, almost 20 years before Doyle wrote about Holmes.
Many Dumas characters including the musketeers are basically superheroes, and that’s also from way earlier in the century. Then you’ve got Ivanhoe and various other Scott characters from even earlier. Can’t think of any 18th century superheroes offhand, though. The modern novel was only invented in the 18th century, though you could argue various epic heroes were super in their ways: Beowulf may not be exactly modern, but being written in the late dark ages, he’s certainly post-classical anyway.
But even late classical period is kind of modern. It’s not like Ovid seriously believed in the gods and heroes he was writing about.
221B Bleeker St. The Bleeker street boys would be almost something else entirely.
Very much off topic, but for anyone wanting a little more Cumberbatch (beside the aforementioned TTSS), might I recommend Fortysomething. It’s nothing earth-shatteringly brilliant or original, but also has Hugh Laurie and Peter Capaldi, is fairly sweet, and at six episodes doesn’t outstay its welcome.
What would be kind of interesting is if it was Christopher street. I don’t know if the BBC Sherlock keeps up the “no, we’re not actually gay” joke throughout, but it was funny in the first episode, anyway…
17th century (1605):
Sure enough. I stand corrected. Fons et origo of the modern novel right there. I was thinking about English-language novels, and was going with Pamela. Of course the Tale of Genji dates from the 11th century, but as a sort of serial soap opera, I’m not sure that counts as a modern novel despite the fact it has a lot of modern sensibility to it.
Who-isms are really Russell T. Davies-isms, Sherlock doesn’t really fall for these because Dr. Who is perhaps too human while the opposite is true for Sherlock (though in many ways he is super human). I think Moffat knows how to balance his sentiment very well and I loved the way that all of the relationships established even as far back as the first episode seemed to feed into this episode. His Dr. Who episodes are usually my favourites.
I sort of hate the Minority Report graphics when Sherlock is thinking though. I always liked the linear way Sherlock’s thoughts and deductions work whereas the flipping around of possibilities seems too cluttered.
As for the superhero talk well…I don’t think he qualifies. If anything I would say that while Moriarty is a super villain (what he pulls off seems very unrealistic) Sherlock remains fairly human, I don’t think he’s ever magically just known something so far. It’s certainly unlikely that someone could have all the knowledge he possesses and the ability to harness it as he does, especially in the more modern setting of this series. I suppose to pin that question down we need to decide whether or not Batman is a superhero and if he is are superheroes simply defined by a costume?
As for the mystery/crime-fiction thing gurugeorge…Agatha Christie isn’t mystery?? You are saying the thing that defines whether or not something is mystery is perspective? If we know what the main character does (as in Chandler) it is a mystery, if we don’t it isn’t?
I disagree that we just sit back and wait for the mystery to be unwound for us. I suppose to make my point I should ask, aren’t you wondering about the series finale? No theories on that?
I agree that Sherlock is treated very heroically, but that’s probably because he’s a hero.
I didn’t know about The Tale of Genji (thanks!), but based on wikipedia’s description, I would say it’s very close to what we call a “modern novel”, but still closer to works like the nordic sagas, Romance of the Three Kingdoms…etc.
Back to the new BBC Holmes, you guys have convinced me to see it. If they can make a believable modern UK version of the original victorian superhero, I’m sold.
Genji is an enormously impressive work (in more ways than one, being so huge), but still, so episodic I’m not sure it’s a novel just because all the chapters have been bound together into a single volume. I theoretically read the Tale of Genji in college (in translation of course; the original is abstruse even for the Japanese these days, though I gather some attempt is made in school to teach most kids enough of the language of the time to struggle through it.) But in fact I read about 1/4, skimmed 1/2 and said the hell with it for the rest. The translation was actually very well written, enough so that I could believe the original was at least as good, but I lost interest after a while. You know: soap opera. I can see any given chapter being considered a good story in itself, especially well-received amongst the terminally bored cloistered upper class women of Heian Kyo who would be waiting anxiously in their boudoirs for their copies to arrive every so often.
I just saw the second episode of Sherlock, season 1. Not quite as good as the first, with an equally dumb mystery (again perfectly in keeping with the original stories), but still fun to watch. I think I’ll go through with watching the whole series.
Both seasons sort of droop a bit during the second episodes. The three-episode pattern seems to be “Holy Cats Awesome Opening Episode”, “oh…that’s the second episode?”, and “oh…that’s the third episo-- HOLY CATS AWESOMELY WEIRD SEASON FINALE WHEN IS THE NEXT SEASON!!!”
-Tom
Well as I understand it, normally the detective genre the reader is given the same clues as the detective protagonist, and invited to solve the puzzle for themselves, perhaps ahead of the detective protagonist. I mean, I don’t read that stuff myself, but that’s my impression of the genre as a whole (my ex is an avid fan of the genre).
But Sherlock Holmes isn’t like that, the clues are things that only he sees and discovers, they’re not telegraphed for the reader. There’s very little that you could figure out for yourself.
That’s what I mean by it being more like the superhero genre - the puzzles are just mcguffins meant to give the hero a chance to show off their powers to advantage - or if they’re stymied by a true “kryptonite”, then it’s only for a moment, to show their will to overcome.
Going deeply, I think the “warm feeling” comes from this: it’s a trust that a being more powerful than we are is basically on the side of the angels, and will look out for our interests, and is reliable as a rock. i.e., a superhero.
We know that the lady policewoman is wrong about Sherlock being a closet psychopath. We wouldn’t know that if this were a type of story in which that could possibly be in doubt (as it could actually be in a genre detective story). Hence, it’s a superhero story: Holmes will always do the right thing, and use his power for good. That’s why reading or seeing the stories has that delicious “warm bath” feeling. There’s an inevitability, a not-in-doubtness, a security there.
As a songwriting friend of mine said, “you have to have some shit bits to make the good bits stand out” :D
I agree that yes Holmes ability to connect the clues is far beyond the reader’s, though remember he is based on a real human being whose deductions were sometimes as impressive as Holmes’. However detective stories inevitably explain the significance of found clues as well as how they connect regardless of whether or not the reader has already guessed. At this point is just becomes a question of the reader’s own powers of deduction.
You’re talking about the protagonist’s reactions to a situation, don’t Christie and Chandler put their characters in specific situations to show how they would act? That’s just basic drama. Holmes acting good doesn’t make him a superhero. Remember in this last episode the mystery of how far Moriarty is willing to go to ruin Holmes is solved not by Holmes’ cold ingenuity but by his self-reflection.
I dunno, the “enhance, enhance” style magico-computer nonsense featured in S02E02-3 (added to the unprecedented goofy indulgence in the “graphical thinking” garbage - tipped me in the direction of not thinking much of the show. (That was a pretty tiny lampshade Moriarty dropped on the head of all the computer magic / supervillainry at the end of E03)
The reasonable - are we doing spoilers?
spoiler
- headfake in the direction of an apparent Reichenbach double suicide, followed by Moriarty’s own choice and its rationale
did something to jazz up the ending. But, not much.