The Baker Street Babes break new ground!

Ah, those Baker Street Babes! Always a step ahead of the Sherlockian mainstream, roaming the world like the Josie and the Pussycats of Sherlock study . . . I’m sure I’m not the only one who eagerly awaits each episode just to see where they’ll be heading next as they jet around the Holmes-world in their podcast adventures. Episode thirty-two of the podcast popped onto my iTunes podcast list today, and as usual, I quickly downloaded it for a listen. And then the weirdest thing happened . . . .

After thirty-one episodes about various Sherlock Holmes-related topics, the Baker Street Babes decided to boldly veer off-topic and do an episode that wasn’t about Sherlock Holmes! Sure, they mentioned the BBC Sherlock series on occasion. They’re the Babes, they have to throw in some Cumberbatch and company, that’s part of why they’re fun to listen to. (That, and the gleeful mentions of Basil of Baker Street.)

But their big divergence from Sherlock Holmes took its strange turn this weekend as they spent over an hour discussing a CBS police procedural drama that was actually about fifteen minutes shorter than the podcast itself. (In other words, they could have re-enacted the entire drama and had another fifteen minutes to talk about what they just did . . . oh, that might have been actually very cool, barring the inevitable lawsuits, of course.)

It’s a bold move for a Sherlock Holmes-based podcast, to be sure, and a real test of the Babes entertainment value in leaving their base topic to discuss a detective drama that was apparently chosen at random. Do they succeed?

Well, they seem to have all their big guns in for the episode. (They really should have a Babe roll call at the beginning of each episode, so new listeners can put names, or pseudo-names, to voices.) At some point they mention using this new show to “fill the void” until production begins on the next BBC Sherlock, and I can understand that. After blogging about Sherlock for the last decade, there was many a week I had to write about Monk or House just to keep to a weekly schedule. And the Babes are a certainly a step above and ahead of a dusty old blog.

Raising such never-before-seen questions as “Should we touch on Watson’s vagina?” the Babes still manage to keep it  fresh (slappably fresh, were they guys), even when discussing a non-Sherlock Holmes detective show. They’ll no doubt survive this latest twist in their podcast career with colors flying. But I think we’ll all be happier when the Cumberbatch corps returns.

Eventually they kind of lost interest in this other show and start talking about X-files and House, but that’s understandable. Nothing really compares to a great Sherlock Holmes TV show or movie.

And I’m sure they’ll get back to one of those soon . . . .