Sherlock Holmes

I have not seen the new series of Sherlock Holmes that PBS is running, but I do want to point out that the earlier Sherlock Holmes on the ‘Mystery’ hour was awful. I can’t even find references for it on a quick Google search, so I suspect it’s not that popular these days. Although incredibly Hollywood, I think Robert Downy, Jr, is currently the best Holmes of the contemporary era until I see otherwise, since Holmes:
– does drugs, which makes him a bit eccentric, and not all hoity-toity British
– knows how to fight, which means he does not get beat up by thugs very often
– understands chemistry and other fields well, and does not rely on purely ‘deductive forensics’ one might say.
– is always in desperate need for adventure.

Whatever self-possession Holmes has, it cannot be his main character trait. There is a strain of Holmeses that fit better with ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ than with the original text. There are great spin-offs (The Mentalist, eg) but when depicting the original tales, there has to be some of these, which happen to fit into a Hollywood movie better than a PBS series.

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