Ah, I am a happy Sherlockian tonight.
Not very far up Knoxville Avenue from me, here in good old Peoria, Illinois, the Richwoods Christian Church put on its Christmas play tonight. The very talented lady who directed the production, Melissa Anderson, made sure there was a reminder on the Sherlock Peoria Facebook page today, and for that, and the play, I am very grateful.
The Greatest Mystery of All, a Kids Rock Christmas play, was presented for one night only, tonight at 7:00 before an audience of around five or six hundred people, with a cast of a hundred or more. And what do you do with a Christmas play cast that large? Well, you have kids singing Christmas carols in voices that range from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special to the Little Rascals. You have Mary and Joseph and the whole nativity cast. And then, if you're the coolest children's play director on Earth, you have Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Mycroft, Irene Adler, all three Violets, Scotland Yard, the Baker Street Irregulars, Professor Moriarty, and . . . Watson's little brother Nigel.
It was a Sherlockian's dream.
Literally, it was a Sherlockian's dream. The play begins with a fellow named Andrew and his friend Stephanie watching the end of the Jeremy Brett adaptation of "Blue Carbuncle." Stephanie goes off to watch Mission Impossible, and Andrew falls asleep reading the story of Jesus's birth. And then dreams he is Billy the page, with Stephanie as Mrs. Hudson (but secretly Jane Carter, a Mission: Impossible team organizer). They, and the whole boatload of Sherlock Holmes characters, wind up back in time, in Nazareth to investigate the mystery of the son of God being born on Earth.
(Which is an especially odd coincidence for me, as an advance copy of Len Bailey's Sherlock Holmes and the Needle's Eye just came in the mail last week, in which "the world's greatest detective tackles the Bible's ultimate mysteries." A lot of mysterious ways going on here lately, let me tell you.)
Anyway, what followed was a whole lot of fun. Only in a Sherlockian's bad popcorn dream could Watson have an unexplained, non-Canonical little brother named Nigel (who looked a lot like the Watson of the movie Young Sherlock Holmes), and Irene Adler lead a female investigative team made up of Violet Hunter, Violet Morton, and Violet Westbury. Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade provided great comedy, often being outshone by their constables Turner and Grant, and when Mary and Joseph were being tailed by Holmes's crew, who was being tailed by Adler's crew, who had Scotland Yard behind them, and with a gang of angels and the Baker Street Irregulars in the mix as well . . . great comedy.
But just the right Christmas songs at just the right points in the traditional nativity tale always brought the pageant back to it's central theme, even if marshalling the pre-K kids' talents was literally a show-stopper as one might expect, and the revelation that Mycroft had connections in places higher than previously thought helped bring a perfect dovetailed solution to this dreamy mix of two Canons.
All in all, it was a splendid evening full of surprises for the Holmes fan lucky enough to get to see it, and a great introduction to the classic Holmes (background on all the characters filled the back half of the program) for all the kids involved. As I said, I am very grateful that I got the chance to see it and share an evening out with the good Carter, who, it must be said, is quite the fan of Christmas.
And for those who keep records of such things, and I know there are some out there: Sherlock Holmes was played by Elijah Wilkes and Dr. Watson was played by Julien Rouleau. You can now add their names to that incredibly long roster of thespians who have taken those classic roles. The name of the play was The Greatest Mystery of All, and there was no mystery about its entertainment value.
The ongoing investigation of Sherlock Holmes, reported from the Peoria, Illinois outpost of Baker Street's dirtiest half a dozen.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Just another Thursday night rant. Sigh.
Okay, this is just getting ridiculous.
Live-tweeting Elementary can be some fast-paced fun, but a.) you have to watch the show, and b.) you have to pay attention to what is happening on the show. And if you're paying attention to Elementary with an active mind, well, disbelief comes very quickly.
Not disbelief that Jonny Lee Miller's character is Sherlock Holmes . . . no, we crossed that bridge long ago. Disbelief that anyone is actually falling for this burlesque of actual intelligence.
Having written the book on Holmes's methods, obscure as it now is, I feel I have some small background in talking about how Sherlock Holmes does what he does. And I can also tell you how the guy in Elementary who is plainly not Sherlock Holmes does what he does.
He takes some common bit of everyday knowledge, like what a safe deposit box key looks like, and then just rattles it out before anyone else in the room can say, "Hey, that's a safe deposit box key!" If you talk constantly, giving no one else a chance to talk, use larger-than-necessary words to describe things (Or just weird alternate verbalizations . . . can Mr. Elementary say "Sponge Bob Squarepants" like a normal person? No, he has to say something like "yellow undersea sponge man."), and speak with an English accent, well, of course you sound like the smartest person in the room. But it doesn't mean you are.
The entire New York Police Department seems to be just background for Mr. Elementary. Captain Gregson and the crew are just there so he's not talking to the air. He wanders their precinct house at all hours, going through their evidence, wanders their crime scenes freely, does everything a cop would do, but doesn't get paid or have a desk. The criminal justice system magically cooperates with his every whim and weak chains of evidence. Elementary is, at the end of the day, a bigger fantasy than one of those vampire or demon-hunter shows on the CW, despite its ongoing urban grit.
And this week, Elementary made the bold plot move of bringing in a male Watson figure to make up for the fact that their female Watson figure doesn't seem to be having any chemistry with their over-talkative twitch-aholic. I'm hoping he's really Moriarty. But then again, I can't imagine this show getting that clever.
There was a time, some years ago, when I couldn't believe that Americans were actually accepting an obvious knucklehead as their president. At the time, I thought that the disillusionment I felt was just a bad feeling that would pass, as it did when the occupant of the Oval Office changed. Now I realize that it was the universe preparing me for what America would accept with the name "Sherlock Holmes" slapped on it.
And it just keeps coming. Next week, Mr. Elementary spends the episode in the toilet.
Seriously. And I can't wait for the flush.
Live-tweeting Elementary can be some fast-paced fun, but a.) you have to watch the show, and b.) you have to pay attention to what is happening on the show. And if you're paying attention to Elementary with an active mind, well, disbelief comes very quickly.
Not disbelief that Jonny Lee Miller's character is Sherlock Holmes . . . no, we crossed that bridge long ago. Disbelief that anyone is actually falling for this burlesque of actual intelligence.
Having written the book on Holmes's methods, obscure as it now is, I feel I have some small background in talking about how Sherlock Holmes does what he does. And I can also tell you how the guy in Elementary who is plainly not Sherlock Holmes does what he does.
He takes some common bit of everyday knowledge, like what a safe deposit box key looks like, and then just rattles it out before anyone else in the room can say, "Hey, that's a safe deposit box key!" If you talk constantly, giving no one else a chance to talk, use larger-than-necessary words to describe things (Or just weird alternate verbalizations . . . can Mr. Elementary say "Sponge Bob Squarepants" like a normal person? No, he has to say something like "yellow undersea sponge man."), and speak with an English accent, well, of course you sound like the smartest person in the room. But it doesn't mean you are.
The entire New York Police Department seems to be just background for Mr. Elementary. Captain Gregson and the crew are just there so he's not talking to the air. He wanders their precinct house at all hours, going through their evidence, wanders their crime scenes freely, does everything a cop would do, but doesn't get paid or have a desk. The criminal justice system magically cooperates with his every whim and weak chains of evidence. Elementary is, at the end of the day, a bigger fantasy than one of those vampire or demon-hunter shows on the CW, despite its ongoing urban grit.
And this week, Elementary made the bold plot move of bringing in a male Watson figure to make up for the fact that their female Watson figure doesn't seem to be having any chemistry with their over-talkative twitch-aholic. I'm hoping he's really Moriarty. But then again, I can't imagine this show getting that clever.
There was a time, some years ago, when I couldn't believe that Americans were actually accepting an obvious knucklehead as their president. At the time, I thought that the disillusionment I felt was just a bad feeling that would pass, as it did when the occupant of the Oval Office changed. Now I realize that it was the universe preparing me for what America would accept with the name "Sherlock Holmes" slapped on it.
And it just keeps coming. Next week, Mr. Elementary spends the episode in the toilet.
Seriously. And I can't wait for the flush.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Make that a bat-stalker cap!
One of my regular YouTube visits is the series "Epic Rap Battles of History," so you can imagine my delight to find Sherlock Holmes putting in an appearance this week. Sherlock's relationship with Batman goes back for decades, the Caped Crusader even being a student of Holmes at one point, but this is definitely the first time they have gone deerstalker-to-cowl in a rap showdown.
The bouts of "Epic Rap Battles of History" are never conclusive, with "Who won?" being the video-ending announcement of each episode, but it does raise the question: Sherlock Holmes versus Batman . . . who would win?
Well, for starters, any encounter between Sherlock and the Batman has to start one way, and one way only: Sherlock Holmes is called upon to find out who the masked vigilante is that is wreaking lawless violence upon Gotham City. Batman has no motivation to look Sherlock up . . . he's a law-abiding citizen of a foreign land. So the initial encounter, prep time, etc., has to go to Holmes.
And you know Sherlock Holmes . . . his first encounter with Batman would be in Wayne Manor, where he'd go to have a little conversation with Bruce Wayne. Not accusing, not on that first trip, just some fact-finding and a little verbal jousting. Confirming his suspicions.
At that point, it goes one of two ways.
Outcome #1: Sherlock Holmes confronts the Batman. Setting up some ruse to draw the Batman out at night, Sherlock announces to Bats that he knows he's Bruce Wayne, then runs down the evidence that conclusively proves it. Of course, during the investigation, Holmes has decided that Gotham City needs the Batman, and with Watson in full agreement, lets Batman know that he and Watson are sworn to secrecy and returning to London.
Outcome #2: Sherlock Holmes confronts Bruce Wayne. Catching Bruce Wayne at some daylight event, Sherlock reveals Wayne's batty alter-ego and presents his evidence to a crowd of reporters, police, and civic leaders. Commissioner Gordon is on hand to take Wayne into custody, and the tale goes on from there.
Sherlock Holmes beats Batman every time. I'm not saying Batman isn't a smart guy. I'm not saying he doesn't have massive resources in a straight-up fight. But here's the thing:
Sherlock Holmes has the complete advantage in a run-in with Batman. Batman has a secret to hide. Sherlock Holmes's greatest skill is unravelling secrets. While Batman has to spend all that time preparing for physical encounters with foes -- gator-men, maniacs, and sci-fi steroid abusers, Holmes gets to walk the daylight world, looking at things, talking to people, and further developing his skills at just one thing: detection.
Batman doesn't kill people. Batman doesn't beat people up just for snooping around Bruce Wayne. He really has no defense against Sherlock Holmes. And no reason for offense against Holmes, either.
But gut feeling on "Epic Rap Battles of History," despite the ending "Who won?" is always that the last person to rap won the battle. In the case of this week's video, it was Sherlock Holmes.
Which makes complete sense.
The bouts of "Epic Rap Battles of History" are never conclusive, with "Who won?" being the video-ending announcement of each episode, but it does raise the question: Sherlock Holmes versus Batman . . . who would win?
Well, for starters, any encounter between Sherlock and the Batman has to start one way, and one way only: Sherlock Holmes is called upon to find out who the masked vigilante is that is wreaking lawless violence upon Gotham City. Batman has no motivation to look Sherlock up . . . he's a law-abiding citizen of a foreign land. So the initial encounter, prep time, etc., has to go to Holmes.
And you know Sherlock Holmes . . . his first encounter with Batman would be in Wayne Manor, where he'd go to have a little conversation with Bruce Wayne. Not accusing, not on that first trip, just some fact-finding and a little verbal jousting. Confirming his suspicions.
At that point, it goes one of two ways.
Outcome #1: Sherlock Holmes confronts the Batman. Setting up some ruse to draw the Batman out at night, Sherlock announces to Bats that he knows he's Bruce Wayne, then runs down the evidence that conclusively proves it. Of course, during the investigation, Holmes has decided that Gotham City needs the Batman, and with Watson in full agreement, lets Batman know that he and Watson are sworn to secrecy and returning to London.
Outcome #2: Sherlock Holmes confronts Bruce Wayne. Catching Bruce Wayne at some daylight event, Sherlock reveals Wayne's batty alter-ego and presents his evidence to a crowd of reporters, police, and civic leaders. Commissioner Gordon is on hand to take Wayne into custody, and the tale goes on from there.
Sherlock Holmes beats Batman every time. I'm not saying Batman isn't a smart guy. I'm not saying he doesn't have massive resources in a straight-up fight. But here's the thing:
Sherlock Holmes has the complete advantage in a run-in with Batman. Batman has a secret to hide. Sherlock Holmes's greatest skill is unravelling secrets. While Batman has to spend all that time preparing for physical encounters with foes -- gator-men, maniacs, and sci-fi steroid abusers, Holmes gets to walk the daylight world, looking at things, talking to people, and further developing his skills at just one thing: detection.
Batman doesn't kill people. Batman doesn't beat people up just for snooping around Bruce Wayne. He really has no defense against Sherlock Holmes. And no reason for offense against Holmes, either.
But gut feeling on "Epic Rap Battles of History," despite the ending "Who won?" is always that the last person to rap won the battle. In the case of this week's video, it was Sherlock Holmes.
Which makes complete sense.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The hour of standing up for Sherlock, part two.
WARNING: The following seemingly dull blog on stats ends with a "Bwah-ha-ha!" Keep reading through the seemingly dull numbers part to find out why. Thanks. Sorry to interrupt your blog-reading.
Sometimes, one has to run the numbers to get a proper perspective.
On Thursday night, November 15, 10.7 million viewers watched Elementary on CBS. The network's viewership started at 17.4 million with the very popular comedy The Big Bang Theory, then declined as the evening went on. CBS had, what is considered by the networks, to be a very good night for television.
The population of the United States of America on that same evening was roughly 314.8 million. Which means that even though Elementary, warts and all, is reaching more people with its "Sherlock Holmes" than almost any other pastiche, it's still hitting only about three percent of the population. And that's just in its country of origin. The numbers are probably less elsewhere.
But here's where it gets interesting: Last year's Super Bowl brought in ten times as many viewers with a record 111.3 million in its audience on NBC. And when that show was done, an average of 37.6 million of those people left their televisions set to NBC to watch The Voice, the show that came on after it.
Elementary, the lucky winner of this year's post-Super Bowl time slot, stands a chance at tripling its viewership on that single night, without any other efforts to promote the show. Of course, you know that CBS is not going to let the slot alone do the work. We're probably going to hear the name "Sherlock Holmes" mentioned multiple times in a Super Bowl telecast for the very first time. Is that enough to make a Sherlockian who usually disdains football watch the big game? Probably not. But when the game is over . . . ah! When the game is over . . .
As I've mentioned in this blog before, the night of Sunday, February 3, 2013 is going to be a big opportunity for fans of Sherlock Holmes. Once the Super Bowl is over and Elementary comes on, being on Twitter and tweeting with the hashtag "#Elementary" is going to get your Sherlock-related tweets seen by a bigger audience than any other time on Twitter. The universe has handed Sherlock Holmes fans a megaphone, and it would be a shame not to use it.
As most folks who read this blog know, personally, I think it's a megaphone to be used to point out the differences between Mr. Elementary, as I like to call Jonny Lee Miller's character, and Sherlock Holmes as we know him. But that's not your only option. If you think Mary Russell was a better female partner for Sherlock Holmes than Joan Watson, she could be the focus of your tweets. If you think Basil Rathbone had the kind of class Miller is going to have to work a little harder to achieve, you can go on a Rathbone-loving rampage. And if you truly, truly love this little TV show they call Elementary, as some very special Sherlock Holmes fans seem to do, here is your time to point out to the world exactly what makes Mr. Elementary the Holmes of your TV dreams.
I dare you.
Yes, you heard me, Elementary fans, I dare you. Show me, real time, what I'm missing about the most awful Sherlock Holmes of the modern era. (And yes, I'm including that guy that fought robots and dinosaurs. Don't know if even I believe Miller is worse than that, but I'm taunting here!) You surely aren't going to let some cad like me turn Elementary live-tweeting that night into something akin to the snarky tweet-storm that took place during Lindsay Lohan's Liz and Dick this past Sunday night, are you? Because NFL teams aren't going to be the only ones training for that night!
If you don't understand the Twitter thing, you still have two months to figure it out, hashtags and all, and if you're smart enough to love Sherlock Holmes outside of a CBS police procedural, you're certainly smart enough by half to use Twitter.
But with that said, are you smart enough to foil a master plan by some deranged anti-Elementary blogger to alter the new-viewer public perception of your favorite fall show? (Come now, it is your favorite, isn't it? Don't lie, now.) Because the hour of Sherlock is coming, my friends. It's coming.
BWAH-HA-HA-HA!
BWAH-HA-HA-HA!!!! (See you Thursday.)
Sometimes, one has to run the numbers to get a proper perspective.
On Thursday night, November 15, 10.7 million viewers watched Elementary on CBS. The network's viewership started at 17.4 million with the very popular comedy The Big Bang Theory, then declined as the evening went on. CBS had, what is considered by the networks, to be a very good night for television.
The population of the United States of America on that same evening was roughly 314.8 million. Which means that even though Elementary, warts and all, is reaching more people with its "Sherlock Holmes" than almost any other pastiche, it's still hitting only about three percent of the population. And that's just in its country of origin. The numbers are probably less elsewhere.
But here's where it gets interesting: Last year's Super Bowl brought in ten times as many viewers with a record 111.3 million in its audience on NBC. And when that show was done, an average of 37.6 million of those people left their televisions set to NBC to watch The Voice, the show that came on after it.
Elementary, the lucky winner of this year's post-Super Bowl time slot, stands a chance at tripling its viewership on that single night, without any other efforts to promote the show. Of course, you know that CBS is not going to let the slot alone do the work. We're probably going to hear the name "Sherlock Holmes" mentioned multiple times in a Super Bowl telecast for the very first time. Is that enough to make a Sherlockian who usually disdains football watch the big game? Probably not. But when the game is over . . . ah! When the game is over . . .
As I've mentioned in this blog before, the night of Sunday, February 3, 2013 is going to be a big opportunity for fans of Sherlock Holmes. Once the Super Bowl is over and Elementary comes on, being on Twitter and tweeting with the hashtag "#Elementary" is going to get your Sherlock-related tweets seen by a bigger audience than any other time on Twitter. The universe has handed Sherlock Holmes fans a megaphone, and it would be a shame not to use it.
As most folks who read this blog know, personally, I think it's a megaphone to be used to point out the differences between Mr. Elementary, as I like to call Jonny Lee Miller's character, and Sherlock Holmes as we know him. But that's not your only option. If you think Mary Russell was a better female partner for Sherlock Holmes than Joan Watson, she could be the focus of your tweets. If you think Basil Rathbone had the kind of class Miller is going to have to work a little harder to achieve, you can go on a Rathbone-loving rampage. And if you truly, truly love this little TV show they call Elementary, as some very special Sherlock Holmes fans seem to do, here is your time to point out to the world exactly what makes Mr. Elementary the Holmes of your TV dreams.
I dare you.
Yes, you heard me, Elementary fans, I dare you. Show me, real time, what I'm missing about the most awful Sherlock Holmes of the modern era. (And yes, I'm including that guy that fought robots and dinosaurs. Don't know if even I believe Miller is worse than that, but I'm taunting here!) You surely aren't going to let some cad like me turn Elementary live-tweeting that night into something akin to the snarky tweet-storm that took place during Lindsay Lohan's Liz and Dick this past Sunday night, are you? Because NFL teams aren't going to be the only ones training for that night!
If you don't understand the Twitter thing, you still have two months to figure it out, hashtags and all, and if you're smart enough to love Sherlock Holmes outside of a CBS police procedural, you're certainly smart enough by half to use Twitter.
But with that said, are you smart enough to foil a master plan by some deranged anti-Elementary blogger to alter the new-viewer public perception of your favorite fall show? (Come now, it is your favorite, isn't it? Don't lie, now.) Because the hour of Sherlock is coming, my friends. It's coming.
BWAH-HA-HA-HA!
BWAH-HA-HA-HA!!!! (See you Thursday.)
Sunday, November 25, 2012
A more insidious bad pastiche.
With a little extra holiday time on one's hands, I decided I would try reading a pastiche that found its way into my library a while ago. Once you've been a Sherlock Holmes fan long enough, books about Holmes have a way of just showing up whether you want them or not, and this was one of those.
You know the drill: Apparently, Dr. Watson wrote about a hundred thousand manuscripts back in the day, then mailed them to random individuals who hid them away in attics, bank vaults, and old home improvements for later generations to find and publish. (We can assume from this that Watson never had children, or that he really hated those kids and didn't want to leave them anything of value.) And then someone who knows you discovers that book and gives it to you, because you like Sherlock Holmes.
But usually not that Sherlock Holmes.
The bad pastiche has been with Sherlock Holmes fans for almost as long as Sherlock Holmes himself. Easy self-publishing routes might mean there's more of it these days, but Sherlock Holmes fans have long been a resourceful and driven lot. We were self-publishing, even in nice, hardcover editions, before any other fandom. That, of course, didn't mean the contents were ever that much better.
So, to get to the point, I once more tried reading a random work of pastiche yesterday. And I just couldn't do it. The Watson was so dramatic in his voice. His use of random large words was so faux Victorian. And his Holmes . . . well, we all know how that goes.
But here's the thing. Reading a bad Holmes book is hard to do. You have to actually hold up the book with your hand and turn pages, simple actions, yes, but they require at least a minor force of will. And if the Sherlock story you are reading is unconvincing, dull, or otherwise just not the Holmes you were looking for, you lose the willpower to hold the book and turn the pages at some point.
And then you quit reading. You set the book down and life goes on. Bad Sherlock Holmes books never attain much popularity, simply because most human beings are not capable of the effort it takes to read them.
In reacquainting myself with this fact, I got one more perspective on a certain subject that I've written about quite a bit lately: bad television pastiche.
Bad television pastiche doesn't require any effort once you've turned the show on. You can relax and let the story play out without moving a muscle or taxing your brain with the act of reading, which doesn't come easily to everyone. You can actually do other things while watching a bad television pastiche, so even the most active of minds can stimulate itself to make up for any deficiencies that the TV show might lack. And unlike bad pastiche in book form, with televised pastiche, it takes an act of will to stop the thing from playing out. A small one, just as with reading a physical book, but an act of will nonetheless.
Or to put it in modern marketing terms: Books are opt-in once you start them. Television is opt-out.
If we could easily keep reading bad published pastiche, if a whole novel were as easy to get through as a single TV episode, we might grow to enjoy it somehow. The brain adapts. Stockholm syndrome, in its mildest form, takes over. If bad published pastiche were as easy to ingest as bad televised pastiche, can you imagine the number of fans Sherlock Holmes would have, with so many books out there? But their favorite Holmeses would be as diverse as humanity itself. So many bad pastiche Holmeses to choose from!
Unfortunately, where easy-viewing weekly television is concerned, our bad pastiche choices are somewhat limited. There's the one. And as to the final effect it's weekly parade will have on American culture's view of Sherlock Holmes, well, we shall see. We've never had a bad pastiche as insidious or well-marketed as this one before.
And it's showing up in a lot more homes that the book I picked up yesterday and tried to read.
You know the drill: Apparently, Dr. Watson wrote about a hundred thousand manuscripts back in the day, then mailed them to random individuals who hid them away in attics, bank vaults, and old home improvements for later generations to find and publish. (We can assume from this that Watson never had children, or that he really hated those kids and didn't want to leave them anything of value.) And then someone who knows you discovers that book and gives it to you, because you like Sherlock Holmes.
But usually not that Sherlock Holmes.
The bad pastiche has been with Sherlock Holmes fans for almost as long as Sherlock Holmes himself. Easy self-publishing routes might mean there's more of it these days, but Sherlock Holmes fans have long been a resourceful and driven lot. We were self-publishing, even in nice, hardcover editions, before any other fandom. That, of course, didn't mean the contents were ever that much better.
So, to get to the point, I once more tried reading a random work of pastiche yesterday. And I just couldn't do it. The Watson was so dramatic in his voice. His use of random large words was so faux Victorian. And his Holmes . . . well, we all know how that goes.
But here's the thing. Reading a bad Holmes book is hard to do. You have to actually hold up the book with your hand and turn pages, simple actions, yes, but they require at least a minor force of will. And if the Sherlock story you are reading is unconvincing, dull, or otherwise just not the Holmes you were looking for, you lose the willpower to hold the book and turn the pages at some point.
And then you quit reading. You set the book down and life goes on. Bad Sherlock Holmes books never attain much popularity, simply because most human beings are not capable of the effort it takes to read them.
In reacquainting myself with this fact, I got one more perspective on a certain subject that I've written about quite a bit lately: bad television pastiche.
Bad television pastiche doesn't require any effort once you've turned the show on. You can relax and let the story play out without moving a muscle or taxing your brain with the act of reading, which doesn't come easily to everyone. You can actually do other things while watching a bad television pastiche, so even the most active of minds can stimulate itself to make up for any deficiencies that the TV show might lack. And unlike bad pastiche in book form, with televised pastiche, it takes an act of will to stop the thing from playing out. A small one, just as with reading a physical book, but an act of will nonetheless.
Or to put it in modern marketing terms: Books are opt-in once you start them. Television is opt-out.
If we could easily keep reading bad published pastiche, if a whole novel were as easy to get through as a single TV episode, we might grow to enjoy it somehow. The brain adapts. Stockholm syndrome, in its mildest form, takes over. If bad published pastiche were as easy to ingest as bad televised pastiche, can you imagine the number of fans Sherlock Holmes would have, with so many books out there? But their favorite Holmeses would be as diverse as humanity itself. So many bad pastiche Holmeses to choose from!
Unfortunately, where easy-viewing weekly television is concerned, our bad pastiche choices are somewhat limited. There's the one. And as to the final effect it's weekly parade will have on American culture's view of Sherlock Holmes, well, we shall see. We've never had a bad pastiche as insidious or well-marketed as this one before.
And it's showing up in a lot more homes that the book I picked up yesterday and tried to read.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Challenge to the viewer.
Back in 1938, Ellery Queen came up with a really cool idea.
He called it Challenge to the Reader, and within a single volume, gathered twenty-five of the greatest fictional detectives of the day, from Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade, from Father Brown to Craig Kennedy. And then Ellery Queen (the two authors / mystery writer / fictional detective . . . however you view him) changed the names of all of the detectives in all of the stories. The challenge to the reader was to figure out which story featured which detective.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were called "Pharoah Jones" and "Dover," and the fact that their story was still called "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" makes the ploy fairly obvious to any real fan of Holmes. Inspector Lestrade still appears with Jones and Dover, as do the other characters. But Ellery Queen's concept was still pretty solid.
Imagine what would happen if we were to take the three big Sherlock Holmeses of the modern day in their assorted formats, Robert Downey Jr.'s theatrical Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch's mini-series Holmes, and Jonny Lee Miller's character in the weekly procedural Elementary, and changed all the names (and that peskily familiar "221B Baker Street" address).
What would we have left? Would we recognize the result as Sherlock Holmes?
Let's start with the Guy Ritchie movies. The Victorian era, consulting detective and the military man, the disguises, the pugilistic skills, the flair for the dramatic . . . if Robert Downey, Jr. didn't look like we think Holmes should look, we'd still know his character was heavily based on Sherlock Holmes. There would be accusations of Guy Ritchie stealing Doyle's lines, and the little homages to things like Rathbone films would start being written up online. As much as Ritchie liked to make Holmes an action movie star (and very successfully show) the main character was still recognizably Sherlock Holmes, and would have been no matter what you called him.
Gatiss and Moffat's BBC Sherlock is set in modern times, which would seem to move the characters a little farther from being recognize as Holmes and Watson if we were to change all the names. But the initial plot, so close to the barely-ever-filmed A Study in Scarlet, was very hard to miss. A long-time fan of Sherlock Holmes could not help but see the tribute to Conan Doyle in the criminal expert and the Afghanistan veteran, so lovingly laid out.
And then we come to Elementary on CBS. Change only the names "Sherlock Holmes" and "Watson," and suddenly you're in with a host of other CBS procedural shows. But were you to see Elementary with the main characters named something like "Esteban Cole" and "Joan Lawson," your first honest thought would very probably not be of Holmes but something like, "This is a really gritty version of Monk!" Without the branding of "Sherlock Holmes," Elementary would probably suffer next to CBS's The Mentalist, not to mention Monk, House, Psych, Perception, Person of Interest, C.S.I. and all those other Sherlock-ish shows that came before.
Using Ellery Queen's Challenge to the Reader as the basis for a little mental exercise with our modern video Holmes franchises, it quickly becomes apparent who was just using the name for a hook to draw viewers in, and who was actually interested in doing the work to try bringing a fully-realized modern version of Sherlock Holmes to a modern viewing public.
He called it Challenge to the Reader, and within a single volume, gathered twenty-five of the greatest fictional detectives of the day, from Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade, from Father Brown to Craig Kennedy. And then Ellery Queen (the two authors / mystery writer / fictional detective . . . however you view him) changed the names of all of the detectives in all of the stories. The challenge to the reader was to figure out which story featured which detective.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were called "Pharoah Jones" and "Dover," and the fact that their story was still called "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" makes the ploy fairly obvious to any real fan of Holmes. Inspector Lestrade still appears with Jones and Dover, as do the other characters. But Ellery Queen's concept was still pretty solid.
Imagine what would happen if we were to take the three big Sherlock Holmeses of the modern day in their assorted formats, Robert Downey Jr.'s theatrical Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch's mini-series Holmes, and Jonny Lee Miller's character in the weekly procedural Elementary, and changed all the names (and that peskily familiar "221B Baker Street" address).
What would we have left? Would we recognize the result as Sherlock Holmes?
Let's start with the Guy Ritchie movies. The Victorian era, consulting detective and the military man, the disguises, the pugilistic skills, the flair for the dramatic . . . if Robert Downey, Jr. didn't look like we think Holmes should look, we'd still know his character was heavily based on Sherlock Holmes. There would be accusations of Guy Ritchie stealing Doyle's lines, and the little homages to things like Rathbone films would start being written up online. As much as Ritchie liked to make Holmes an action movie star (and very successfully show) the main character was still recognizably Sherlock Holmes, and would have been no matter what you called him.
Gatiss and Moffat's BBC Sherlock is set in modern times, which would seem to move the characters a little farther from being recognize as Holmes and Watson if we were to change all the names. But the initial plot, so close to the barely-ever-filmed A Study in Scarlet, was very hard to miss. A long-time fan of Sherlock Holmes could not help but see the tribute to Conan Doyle in the criminal expert and the Afghanistan veteran, so lovingly laid out.
And then we come to Elementary on CBS. Change only the names "Sherlock Holmes" and "Watson," and suddenly you're in with a host of other CBS procedural shows. But were you to see Elementary with the main characters named something like "Esteban Cole" and "Joan Lawson," your first honest thought would very probably not be of Holmes but something like, "This is a really gritty version of Monk!" Without the branding of "Sherlock Holmes," Elementary would probably suffer next to CBS's The Mentalist, not to mention Monk, House, Psych, Perception, Person of Interest, C.S.I. and all those other Sherlock-ish shows that came before.
Using Ellery Queen's Challenge to the Reader as the basis for a little mental exercise with our modern video Holmes franchises, it quickly becomes apparent who was just using the name for a hook to draw viewers in, and who was actually interested in doing the work to try bringing a fully-realized modern version of Sherlock Holmes to a modern viewing public.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Worlds without a Doyle.
If you live in the modern world, your name is "Sherlock Holmes," and nobody ever comments on it, chances are that you live in a fictional universe.
At least a couple articles have shown up online of late dealing with this premise. The main character of CBS's Elementary roaming New York City without anyone going, "Hey, I loved your stories!" or "No shit, Sherlock!" just seems a little odd. After all, his name is supposed to be "Sherlock Holmes."
Something about Jonny Lee Miller telling people that his name is "Sherlock" without ever getting a response seems more off than Benedict Cumberbatch doing so, the latter residing in a modern London, with a modern-yet-familiar Watson, and a lot more updated Canonical details. But let's leave that for now.
The point that the articles I've seen bring up is that in the world of Elementary, since no one seems to remember any Sherlock Holmes stories, there must have been no Arthur Conan Doyle. It's an understandably short-sighted conclusion, after all, creating Sherlock Holmes is what put Doyle on the map, and to most people, that's all he ever did. Novels like The Lost World or The White Company, and short stories like The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard, just don't show up on their literary radar.
But Conan Doyle can easily exist in this world of Elementary (or BBC Sherlock) where Sherlock Holmes did not exist pre-Y2K. A writer of historical novels and science fiction who became a crusader for spiritualism -- while he might not have been as famous as he was in our history books, he surely would have found some place there. Wiping him from existence along with his creation really deprives us of an opportunity to consider what that marvelous fellow would be remembered for without Sherlock Holmes. Professor Challenger, perhaps?
It's great fun to see such a premise raised in media outside the little bubble of traditional Sherlockian publications, but it is definitely missing the follow-through a true Doyle fan would provide. We're probably not going to see the writers of Elementary do a Doyle-based, historically-linked episode. The Sherlock boys might get tempted to give Watson a modern agent named Doyle, since their Watson is a writer. A true fan of Conan Doyle, however, might give the question of a Holmes-less Doyle a treatment to rival the alternate histories of Abraham Lincoln. (I still think that Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith is the closest thing to Sherlockian scholarship outside of Sherlockiana that I've seen.)
And even beyond Doyle, it might prove an interesting exercise to consider ourselves in the worlds of Elementary or Sherlock. What might we fans be doing without the hundred years of Sherlock Holmes that led to either of those shows? (Neither of which would exist, of course. And as much as I'd like to be without Elementary, it seems a steep price to pay.)
One thing is for certain: Sherlock Holmes always seems to find some way to give us mental exercise. He's something like a god of intelligence that way. With or without his Moses, Conan Doyle.
At least a couple articles have shown up online of late dealing with this premise. The main character of CBS's Elementary roaming New York City without anyone going, "Hey, I loved your stories!" or "No shit, Sherlock!" just seems a little odd. After all, his name is supposed to be "Sherlock Holmes."
Something about Jonny Lee Miller telling people that his name is "Sherlock" without ever getting a response seems more off than Benedict Cumberbatch doing so, the latter residing in a modern London, with a modern-yet-familiar Watson, and a lot more updated Canonical details. But let's leave that for now.
The point that the articles I've seen bring up is that in the world of Elementary, since no one seems to remember any Sherlock Holmes stories, there must have been no Arthur Conan Doyle. It's an understandably short-sighted conclusion, after all, creating Sherlock Holmes is what put Doyle on the map, and to most people, that's all he ever did. Novels like The Lost World or The White Company, and short stories like The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard, just don't show up on their literary radar.
But Conan Doyle can easily exist in this world of Elementary (or BBC Sherlock) where Sherlock Holmes did not exist pre-Y2K. A writer of historical novels and science fiction who became a crusader for spiritualism -- while he might not have been as famous as he was in our history books, he surely would have found some place there. Wiping him from existence along with his creation really deprives us of an opportunity to consider what that marvelous fellow would be remembered for without Sherlock Holmes. Professor Challenger, perhaps?
It's great fun to see such a premise raised in media outside the little bubble of traditional Sherlockian publications, but it is definitely missing the follow-through a true Doyle fan would provide. We're probably not going to see the writers of Elementary do a Doyle-based, historically-linked episode. The Sherlock boys might get tempted to give Watson a modern agent named Doyle, since their Watson is a writer. A true fan of Conan Doyle, however, might give the question of a Holmes-less Doyle a treatment to rival the alternate histories of Abraham Lincoln. (I still think that Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith is the closest thing to Sherlockian scholarship outside of Sherlockiana that I've seen.)
And even beyond Doyle, it might prove an interesting exercise to consider ourselves in the worlds of Elementary or Sherlock. What might we fans be doing without the hundred years of Sherlock Holmes that led to either of those shows? (Neither of which would exist, of course. And as much as I'd like to be without Elementary, it seems a steep price to pay.)
One thing is for certain: Sherlock Holmes always seems to find some way to give us mental exercise. He's something like a god of intelligence that way. With or without his Moses, Conan Doyle.
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