My Comfort Sherlock Holmes

 It's easy not to expect much from a TV Sherlock Holmes. The medium has given us such random incarnations of the great detective -- actors like Roger Moore, Tom Baker, Matt Frewer, and James D'Arcy make the casting choices seem practically random. And once cast, who knows what direction the script and director will take them.

So when Watson on CBS announced Sherlock Holmes was returning from Reichenbach Falls yet again, to be played by Robert Carlyle, most famous in my mind for The Full Monty from the showrunner who gave us Elementary, well, let's just say I was not optimistic. (Apologies, Elementary fans, but I still just don't get it.)

Sherlock Holmes turned up in Watson's kitchen in the middle of the night, making a sandwich, just as casually as you please. No disguise as an old book dealer. No air-gun worries. Just "My dear Watson . . . I don't suppose you have any horse radish."

He offers Watson the chance to hit him for faking his death, but Morris Chestnut's Watson is no Martin Freeman Watson. This Watson goes in for the hug. And then lets Holmes finish making his sandwich.

"I was hoping we could start small," Holmes starts when asked about how he survived and what he was up to. There is a tenderness between the two. Not ship-worthy, but that of real friendship. Holmes admits to fearing he's hurt their friendship, and then does start small with that simplest of questions, "How was your day?"

And he had me.

Robert Carlyle's Sherlock Holmes was kind and gentle, with that sort of wisdom we expect from a aging sage. The episode that follows, then, is Watson telling Holmes about his day, and the latest medical mystery. The two talk all night, until the sun rises the next day, as one would expect of two close friends so long apart. It reminded me of the set-up for Lee Shackleford's play, Holmes and Watson, where the two friends spend their first night together post-Reichenbach talking it out. But that was more dramatic, not this quiet, not this comfortable.

I was surprised at how much I loved this new Sherlock Holmes. No diagnosable personality disorders, no over-dramatic quirks. Just that sage old friend you'd love to have in your life. Like those Holmeses from a day when genius detectives didn't have to have some personal defects to counterbalance their superior brains for the more mundane minds. From a day when we trusted our experts, and desperate influencers weren't trying to puff up their own opinions by tearing down the learned.

In a time when things are as messy as they've ever been, Robert Carlyle brought us a "comfort Sherlock." The kind of Sherlock Holmes that I'd love to find in my kitchen making a sandwich some evening after having a pleasant evening with a date who was still asleep back in the bedroom. (Okay, so that date part is just the icing on the Watson cake.)  I was really thinking this Watson might leave his current love interest and start chasing cases with Sherlock Holmes, but no! This Holmes lets Watson get on with his life . . . even if Holmes does suggest that Mary Morstan and John Watson might really be the couple that should be togther.

I happy with this new Sherlock Holmes. And his secret mission to deal with that very real problem we have with the uber-rich right now. I'm looking forward to his eventual return.

Just Watson's Grandparents?

 In all my years as a Sherlockian, and lately a Watsonian podcaster, I have heard many a conversation and read many a thought on John H. Watson's sad brother and his late father. The watch scene in The Sign of the Four has etched that one into Sherlockian minds like the pawnbroker's scratched ticket number mentioned in that same scene. But in all that time, I've never heard anyone speak of Watson's grandparents.

Tonight's library group discussion of "The Adventure of the Empty House" brought a particular line from that story to the fore: 

"The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame."

Tracing a person's profile on to black paper and then cutting it out was an nice, low-cost way to do something like a portrait before photography was a thing. The middle and lower classes could afford to hang such a shadow portrait of a loved one on their wall in the Victorian era, and apparently Watson's grandparents were fond of the form. The idea that a young John H. Watson's silhouette was once hung upon their wall is intriguing.

Silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes, inspired by that window shade in "Empty House" or not, have long been a part of Sherlockian culture going back a long ways. How far back? Well, let me propose a first silhouette of Sherlock Holmes that goes back long before anyone ever read of him. Because what did Watson write?

"... one of those black silhouettes which OUR grandparents loved to frame."

And who was he with when that "our" came up?

Sherlock Holmes.

Sounds a little bit like Holmes and Watson had the same grandparents, doesn't it?

Holmes and Watson as first cousins? Which would mean Watson only pretended he didn't know about Mycroft (like he doesn't seem to know about Moriarty when we know he did). And that Stamford bringing them together was a little different than we imagined: "Hey, I heard your cousin was looking for someone to share rooms with."

Well, it's a thought. Always something fun coming up at library discussion group night.

Explaining Sherlock Holmes

 Yesterday, someone asked me if I could explain Sherlock Holmes to them. It took me a bit to get back to that question, and I thought, "why not share what I come up with to answer that." So here we are.

Sherlock Holmes.

Originally a detective character in four novels and sixty short stories published between 1887 and 1927, Sherlock Holmes became the model for generations of fictional detectives to come. Working with the police, but not one of them, Holmes used his special talents for seeing details, working out theories, and presenting solutions in a dramatic fashion to solve mysteries in a very entertaining fashion. 

Most of his stories are narrated by his friend Dr. Watson, whom fans of Sherlock Holmes sometimes like to pretend actually wrote the stories instead of the true author, Arthur Conan Doyle. The level of actual historical detail that Doyle layered into the stories gives fans a window into the Victorian era in which Holmes worked, so that if Sherlock Holmes goes to a restaurant called "Simpson's" you can often look it up and learn all about it from historical sources. This makes Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson almost seem like historical characters who actually existed, delighting their fans all the more and confusing a few folks along the way.

As time has gone by, versions of Sherlock Holmes in books, TV, and movies, have moved beyond the Victorian era and been used for drama, comedy, and nearly every other sort of entertainment you can name, including commercials and pornography. It was once said that there was more written about Sherlock Holmes than anyone besides Jesus and Napoleon, but at this point, I think he might be beating Napoleon. The images of a fore-and-aft cap and a magnifying glass, used by early actors to play Holmes on stage and screen, now symbolize detective-work when applied to anyone in cartoons or live action. Sherlock Holmes has, in the nearly one hundred and forty years since his creation, become a part of our culture across most of the world.

Okay, that's my answer. Most folks might have used an AI to come up with that at this point, but I needed the mental exercise and was very curious what the answer was myself. Having studied Sherlock Holmes for over forty years, it was fun to see what came out of my brain on the topic.

My kind of Sherlockiana

Sherlockiana is such a far-ranging hobby that one constantly has opportunities to look into the distance and go, "Why aren't I doing that thing?" Sometimes the answer is obvious, like watching a certain Will Ferrell movie or spending a year working out a detailed system for putting dates to Watson's cases is to people who aren't me. But then there's the opposite, when you do a thing and go "YES! This is why I am in this hobby!!!"

I had one of those times Monday night, recording the latest episode of Sherlock Holmes Is Real, when Talon King, Dr. Janet Peters, Mrs. Horace Thimbleburger, and Shecky Spielberg went on for an hour about "The Case of the Night Train Riddle" which they seem to believe is actual documentary footage of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson solving a case. (It's the premise of the podcast later episodes, if you haven't bumped into it yet.) It'll be coming out later this week.

But if you type "Sherlock Holmes is real" into Google, the AI will immediately tell you, "No, Sherlock Holmes is not a real person, he is a fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." Because the AI does not know how to have fun, and is also kind of a jerk. It makes up its own pretend facts when it wants to, but doesn't seem to want to let others to play games or have a podcast whose name it disagrees with.

But, not being an AI myself, I do like to play silly games. Life is work. Sherlockiana is a nice escape from the chores of life and whether it's getting together with other Sherlockians or fiddling around with my own brand of Sherlockian scholarship, the most silly, the most absurd Sherlockian tangents have long been my favorite. It's what makes a Holmesian like Paul Thomas Miller such a treasure. 

We've come so far since Rex Stout simply gender-bending John Watson was the height of Sherlockian hilarity. So far! These days we have things like Mike McSwiggin finding the funny in Sherlockian chronology, of all things. The list of Sherlockians who have made me laugh is tempting to get into here, but we all have different folks who catch us with the right silliness at the right moment. It's been woven into our culture from the earliest days.

Ronald Knox, Christopher Morley . . . they were not taking this thing seriously at all. It took time and academia to push those borders. I get it -- some of my first Sherlockian writings were term papers where I had to be serious to get a grade. But that's not where the best stuff is for this little black duck. So here's to the fun bits! Hope yours are many and just the best.

We Come To This Place . . .

 I see Nicole Kidman a lot. Sometimes once a week. Sometimes more.

I'm referring, of course, to her monologue before every movie shown at the local AMC theater. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a link to it. Her monologue is like part of a church ritual that brings the faithful together for what is about to take place. Is she turning AMC audiences into a cult? Could very well be. But being in a certain other fandom cult, I know cults aren't always about sexual slavery and drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.

"We come to this place . . ." Nicole begins, eventually closing with ". . . stories feel perfect and powerful. Because here [dramatic pause] they are."

A lot of that speech applies to Sherlock Holmes as well as AMC Theaters. Not all stories, like all movies, are actually perfect or powerful. A whole lot of them suck. But even the bad catch some of the radiance of the good, elevating them at least to a level where they get noticed.

But lately, with Sherlock Holmes and this hobby we call Sherlockian, I've begun to ponder why we do come to this place. It's a large and diverse city-in-miscrocosm of a hobby, with neighborhoods that each have their own personality, posh venues, long-standing institutions, and back alleys that can make our Sherlockopolis look a bit different for each of its citizens. It may look like one single entity from a distance, but, oh, it is not even close to the simplicity of what any one view can take in.

And we all come to this place, this Sherlockopolis, for our own reasons. Community, connections, creative outlets, and, primarily, the chance to go somewhere outside our normal lives. And since it's a place of imagination, it can be whatever we need it to be . . . for us, for our own escape from the day-to-day. But there are other minds, with other imaginings here too. John Watson's everyman quality, spread across a world of people, makes him a secret legion of perceived John Watsons.

One of the best terms to come to any fandom in recent decades . . . and the Sherlockopolis is a fandom city, make no mistake about that . . . is "headcanon." Headcanon is the simple acknowledgement that we all have our own interpretation of the characters and stories that we share with the world. There are, of course, those who are sure their headcanon is actual Canon, whether due to innocence or narcissism, and they do like to interrupt a conversation to speak their truth on occasion. But its their truth, not always ours, and not what we came to this place for.

We come to this place for the things we share. The things we enjoy together. The things we want to learn together. Some of us may be like farmers, who enjoy living outside the city and growing ideas, writings, art, or presentations, but every now and then we have to come to town to share our produce, talk to the other farmers, and catch up on the news. Or take a little vacation there.

But our Sherlockopolis has no Nicole Kidman, framing our coming experience with a little monologue that just will not go away before every outing. We have to decide why we come to this place on our own.

And sometimes that bears thinking about.

What If We All Just Did Clickbait Headlines?

 By now, most of us are probably used to it. The headline reads "11 Years Later, I'm Still Mad About What BBC's Sherlock Did To This Beloved Book Character." The photo underneath it in your news feed results shows Martin Freeman as John Watson. They don't tell you what character, so you'll click to find out. They show you Martin Freeman so you'll click if you like him. They tell you they're mad about BBC Sherlock so you'll click if you want validation in the emotion you still feel about that show.

Click. Click. Click.

Now, in our Sherlockian world, some areas move much slower than the rest of the world. We don't have a click-baity website of our own, luring engagement to any fandom entity. Heck, the traditional faction of our hobby still revolves around a printed journal. And it sure doesn't use headlines like "One Hundred and Seventeen Years Later, I Can't Believe Conan Doyle Used This Dead Character in Wisteria Lodge." You either already subscribe to the journal or you don't, and nobody is picking it up off a pharmacy magazine display.

But what if we did use teaser headlines to lure people to our works. Take the winter 2024 issue of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, for example, just grabbed up randomly from a shelf.

"Even Jack the Ripper Should Have Known This Hat Was Just A Mistake"

"The One Act Play That Caused Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson To Do These Favorite Things"

"One House Shows What All of England Thought About This Country"

"The Weapon That Changed Everything And Sherlock's Part In It"

"Did Conan Doyle Just Copy Sherlock Holmes From This Old Book?"

"How Sherlock Holmes Made Me Do A Hotel Rendezvous"

"Holmes Fans Won't Stop Battling Fans of This Literary Character!"

"Going To College For Reasons You Won't Believe"

Am I going to explain what those articles were really about? Of course not, because as with all clickbait, the tease is the thing. Just trying to force you to do something you wouldn't normally do. And if you did pick up that issue of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, your ultimate reaction, as with the clicking of any clickbait headline will probably be "Oh, it's just that. I knew about that." Not to say there aren't facts in the SHJ you might not have known. But the topics are not nearly as remarkably outside of your current knowledge as the headlines might cause you to hope.

Teaser headlines have been with us a very long time. But thanks to digital media, we now have more than ever, and my lame attempts above don't nearly do justice to the art form its become. And clicking on the link is definitely less profitable than ever as well.

"I'm not interested in that."

 We're all about having opinions these days, thanks to that great concert hall of a billion stages that we call the internet. Blogs, podcasts, videos long and short . . . putting our opinions into a public space for validation or hoped-for entertainment value is what we do now. Occasionally, however, it might be good to just leave things alone.

So here's my review of CW's "Sherlock and Daughter."

I'm not interested in that. Watched enough to learn I wasn't interested, probably not going back. And as Stan Lee used to say "Nuff said!" 

[Weeks pass.]

But then my companion, the good Carter, watched the entirety of the first episode and went "It wasn't too bad." And then HBO Max decided it was worth putting on their service, and it started popping up on promos there. And CBS Watson is now well in the rearview mirror, no more distractions.

"London 1896" -- that date is going to haunt me. Sherlock Holmes comes in bossy, making basic deductions, looking like David Thewlis, he then sees a red piece of thread on a boy's wrist, gets freaked out and runs frightened from a crime scene. There's not a part of that sentence that is anything that makes me want to watch this particular Sherlock. Cut to New York City and a girl named Amelia Rojas gets suckered by the worst cast crime boy, then tries to buy a ticket to England without money in an exchange that's just hard to watch. 

A still-bossy Sherlock Holmes abuses Mrs. Hudson's sister, who was just in the hall talking to someone who looked like a poorly cast Watson, but then we hear what might be a Moriarty voiceover of a kidnapping paste-together note threatening the kidnapped Watson and Mrs. Hudson, and there's a finger in a box that apparently used to belong to Holmes's maid? Ugh. I don't know if I can take much more.

Amelia Rojas meets a rich American girl destined to wed a random aristocrat on the ship to England, shows what a good artist she is. But the rich girl's mother is very unpleasant and hates poors, even though Amelia sure doesn't dress or look all that poverty-stricken. At this point I'm wondering where the happy part of this show is, or if the creators are of the "fiction is all character abuse" school.

There's a metal disc with a hole in it that moves across a map of London as Amelia makes her way to 221 Baker Street and its basement servant's entrance where she is instantly mistaken for the replacement maid in the giant kitchen of 221 Baker Street. Did I mention that 221 is huge inside? London of 1896 apparently had more available space pre-blitz.

Amelia meets unpleasant Sherlock. (Ohhh, the metal disc is her belt buckle. I see it now.) Things go about as well as one would expect. Sherlock deduces she's American from her accent, and calls out her belt buckle as Californian craftsmanship. Weak sauce, man. Weak sauce.

OMG, Holmes's burst-in clients are the parents of Amelia's ship-friend, and that makes Amelia  an unwanted assistant to crabby Sherlock.

Okay, I seriously don't understand what I'm supposed to enjoy about this. I tried. I really tried. But it's so unpleasant across the board to my particular tastes. Twenty-seven minutes in and I'm out.

It will probably have its fans, as everything does. And good for them! I mean, a lot of people gave up on CBS's Watson after one episode while I found enough fun in even its goofy bits to continue finding some joy there. But this one . . . definitely not my cuppa tea.

So let me know how it goes. Hearing about it second-hand might be my best way to enjoy Sherlock & Daughter.