Review: ‘Sherlock’, The New Kid On The Block
You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out who’s made his second fantastic comeback in seven months.
Last Christmas Robert Downey Jr.’s [[[Sherlock Holmes]]] was great fun, featuring a contemporary approach
that actually had a lot more to do with the original stories than the subsequent movies and teevee shows. I’m looking forward to the sequel.
Last week, the BBC debuted its new series of [[[Sherlock]]] teevee movies, created and produced by [[[Doctor Who]]] showrunner Stephen Moffat, who also wrote the pilot. He took the great detective and set him in contemporary times.
Yeah, I know.
As Rocket J. Squirrel famously stated, “But that trick never works.”
There’s nothing new about this: Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock battled Nazi spies during World War II. We watched Moffat’s Sherlock strictly because of my overwhelming enthusiasm for Moffat as a writer, and we weren’t disappointed. It was a non-stop thrill ride with a perfectly obsessed
Holmes deploying cell phones and nicotine patches in his exhibitions of genius.
As Sherlock, actor Benedict Cumberbatch was right on the
money: intense, possessed, and brilliant. He’s a bit like Moffat’s Doctor Who,
Matt Smith, although he’s actually older and less restrained. Evidently, he
turned down an offer to play Doctor Eleven because he didn’t want his face on lunch boxes. Still, it doesn’t take a fanboy to wish for a crossover.
His comrade-in-sleuthing Dr. Watson was admirably portrayed by Martin Freeman, of [[[The Office]]] fame (that’s the original one, not NBC’s Americanized version). His performance reminds me a bit of John Simm’s work on [[[Life On Mars]]]; that’s high praise in my book.
The updating went well. Everybody is acting as though it
is really 2010 and the cast is expanded to reflect current reality. It’s been a
long time since I had so much fun watching a teevee pilot, and I highly
recommend it. It will show up stateside on PBS’s [[[Masterpiece]]] whenever they feel like running it.