The three nicotene patches he used to help him concentrate made me chuckle.
Just saw the first episode.
Loved it.
Way better than the Downey Jr. movie. Wayyyyy better.
“I’m in shock. Look, I’ve got a blanket.”
Loved it …LOVED IT! My husband didn’t watch it but I have told him he must, so we will be watching it together later this week. I agree with most everyone on the board…this is what the Downey Holmes should have been!
Fair warning–the second ep is weaker than the first but #3 more than makes up for it.
Not that the second wasn’t very good in it’s own right. They are all very good.
Very good. I especially liked the scene where Holmes explains all the stuff he instantly figured out about Watson (psychosomatic limp, drunken divorced sibling, all that); Watson remarks “That’s very impressive” and Holmes tells him people usually say “Piss off.” Which they probably would, IRL.
I also liked the reworking of A Study In Scarlet, though as some have already remarked, it was not a rewriting so much as a “cut into pieces and reuse some pieces” of the original story. It’s still fun if you know the original story.
One piece of the original they should have thought harder about, though: The cabbie’s death-sentence aneurysm (though I liked the line “That’s the most fun you can have with an aneurysm.”). It worked in the original story, but 1. Aneurysms can be treated today–why wasn’t his? 2. He’s got an aneurysm that could blow any second–how the hell is he allowed to drive a cab? (Not that he would care about the law, but the cops would; my understanding is the London black cabs are tightly regulated.)
We watched it last night and thought it was fantastic. The actors were great together and the dialogue was just amazing. I got the cabbie thing the first time Mrs. Hudson appeared and Holmes said he hadn’t ordered one. I’m not sure what took him so long, except that he may have been distracted by the missing phone. But that’s a minor quibble. My husband and I have been talking about it all day, it was just so good.
I think he was distracted by all the cops (who would love to take him down a peg) searching his flat. Holmes obviously had something that he didn’t want them to find.
This is a specific Doyle reference, Holmes smokes his pipe to help him think and describes something as a “three pipe problem.” There were lots of such throw-away references.
Again, those who know the Holmes stories well know that he took cocaine for stimulation when life became “boring.”
In the original story, Holmes spends a lot of time studying Watson’s pocket watch to draw such conclusions. Time can move fast in a story but the TV version would obviously be dull if we just watched Holmes study the cellphone for five or ten minutes. They’ve speeded up the pacing considerably. This was also noticeable when Holmes examines the body (“wet” and “dry” and so forth flashing across the screen.) The real-life examination would have taken considerable time; the show is using short-cuts to keep the pacing brisk.
I loved the show. I thought they really captured the Holmes and Watson flavor, while updating brilliantly. (And I caught that it was Mycroft during the first conversation with Watson. However, Mycroft should be somewhat stout*, so the casting I thought was a little off. I guess that since they wanted the audience to think it was Moriarty, casting a thinner actor made sense. There was a line about him having “lost weight” later.)
- Intentional pun and reference to Rex Stout.
Also, of course, they needed a role for series co-creator/producer Mark Gatiss that allowed room for his somewhat arch acting style.
I wonder how much of this was caused by A Study In Pink being expanded from its original 60-minute length?
Did anybody but me notice the one scene where Sherlock is squatting in his chair? I wonder if the screenwriters are Death Note fans or if this was just a coincidence?
I wasn’t sure whether this version of Holmes had a cocaine habit. He described himself as “clean” to Watson and Lastrade.
People who claim to be “clean” are people who are known to have spent time “not clean.”
He was probably lying. You could tell when Watson protested that Sherlock would never and Sherlock gave him that look. I think they did a good job of hinting at his drug use for the “purists” without turning him into an open junkie.
also how awesome is Lastrade? I want a spin-off starring Rupert Graves being all hot and awesome and solving the crimes that aren’t important enough for Sherlock.
The way I explained it to myself was: 1) The location of the aneurysm in his brain made it impossible for the surgeon to get to without killing the patient, and 2) He never told the cab company about his aneurysm or his doctor about his driving a cab.
I certainly got the vibe of his meaning clean as “clean, right now, in this moment, but I might be holding” from the way he looked meaningfully at Watson.
Loved it. I was glad not to have read or seen the original Scarlet story. Reminded me a lot of Dr Who. And of course the whole pill thing had shades of Princess Bride. Also liked the way they visualized the clue finding.
I would have thought Holmes got by on his non-police jobs, but from this episode it seems like he gets paid for those in favors rather than in cash.
I suppose his ego wouldn’t let him play it safe. But yeah, that was kind of silly. Also disappointing that the audience never finds out.
I totally did not realize it was Rupert Graves. Is he not aging well?
The Moriarty switcheroo was fun, but it seems there is still a real Moriarty.
One more nice thing about this version, is that Lastrade and Watson are both smart, capable human beings. In some versions, I would be surprised if they could wipe their own bottoms without assistance.
I thought that the first series was truly excellent on several levels, and innovative.
I hope that future episodes keep up to the very high level already set.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I always thought Basil Rathbone was a great Holmes, but using Nigel Bruce as a doofus comedy sidekick made me detest the entire series of movies.