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The Thread Of Sherlock Holmes

Mark Gattis is the subject of Who Do You Think Yo Are? tonight, BBC1, 9pm.
Off to Ireland to research his ancestry, he comes up with a pretty Fortean finding!
 
A special episode of Sherlock is to be screened in more than 100 UK cinemas at the same time as it is seen on BBC One.

Fans will get to see Sherlock: The Abominable Bride, a one-off episode set in London in 1895, on New Year's Day.

The episode will also be broadcast on PBS in the US on the same day as its UK transmission for the first time.

A trailer shows Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson in foggy Victorian London as they pursue an "impossible case".

London in 1895 is often thought of as being the quintessential setting for Arthur Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories.

It is also the year after the fictional detective returned after Conan Doyle apparently killed him off.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34631799
 
Is this ghost story behind the new episode of Sherlock?
PRI's The World
December 30, 2015 · 8:00 AM EST
By Bradley Campbell (follow)

Had Mark Gatiss seen a ghost?
I put the question to him. And this spooky story, made all the better by his gravely tone, is what he shared...
---
Well…
I did once actually have a supernatural experience. I was very skeptical because I thought it would never happen to someone like me. But it sort of did.
Many years ago, I was living in Leeds. It's in the north of England. A friend of mine went on summer vacation and he let me have his attic room in this big Victorian house for three months. It was a godsend because I was desperately poor. It was a big empty, spooky house.
It started off fine.
Click to expand...

Full story here,
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-30/ghost-story-behind-new-episode-sherlock
 
That's Sherlock - treat the audience mean and keep 'em keen. As expected, we're not much further into solving the mysteries, but I thoroughly enjoyed this trip through Holmes's mind palace, lots of laughs, even more puzzles, feminism and a tantalising hint of wrapping things up in... wait a minute, when? It took two years for the gang to get back together for this one, we won't have to wait another two years, will we? I suppose the episodes' rarity is what makes them special, but come on!
 
I only just got round to watching it. Enjoyable on so many levels. Dare I say it was perfect entertainment? It will be hard to improve on it.

And now I can go and read the newspaper reviews! :D
 
I fell asleep about halfway through - will have to try again on iPlayer!
 
Ha ha! This Guardian review agrees with me - it starts off...

"I’m telling you – 2016 television is downhill from here on.

From a negligible half-line in one of the 60 stories by Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes – the detective mentions “the case of Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife” as he’s going through old files in The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual – Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat built 90 minutes of the fastest, funniest, flashiest, cleverest, most demanding, ridiculous and brilliant drama there is likely to be until … well, possibly until the next Sherlock comes along, sometime in 2017 we are told."

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/jan/02/sherlocks-back-and-its-fast-fun-flashy-fantastic
 
Spoiler alert...




So the Purple Ku Klux Clan then?
I thought this was pretty much where Shelock jumped the shark. Although I've been a bit too peeved by the real life antics of Cumberbatch this year with that Hamlet nonsense and his egotistical political comments to engage with the series anymore.
The Curse of Who was running all though this episode - overcomplicating the plot with in-jokes and a lame resolution. After insisting it wasn't twins... it turned out to be something along similar lines but even less interesting.
The cross-dressing doctor was so awkward you could actually see a long shoehorn protruding from the back of her manly attire in the morgue.

Still. It was nice to see a bit of topical fat shaming with Gatiss bloating up and devouring fistfuls of plum puddings. Wasn't it?
 
I also find it very hard to believe the peppers ghost trick would work as well it did outside a theatre environment.
 
The latest episode of Sherlock indicates the upcoming series four will have all the faults of the last series. The first two series were quick and sharp, with the stories moving at a sprint and still managing to be packed and gripping. In the third series we had inflicted upon us rampages through Sherlock's mind (I particularly remember several minutes of his thought processes after he'd been shot), oblique, strained dialogue and flashy, self-indulgent directorial 'flare', none of which does anything but distract from the narrative and fill time. And as a final assault on the value of the character, he shoots dead an opponent he couldn't outwit. It seems we have more of the same to look forward to. I will give the next series a chance, but I doubt I'll get very excited by it.
 
I enjoyed it immensely, but found myself taken aback by the 'feminist' message, rather hammered, although perhaps a riposte to the sexism of Victorian Holmes. I do find the 'mind palace' thing rather tiring. Anyone who has tried to use a memory palace*, quickly finds it has limited uses and is only good for contextually related information (remembering where things are, rather than storing 'documents') and need regular refreshing to remain of any use. This idea of using it to 'run' a problem echos Tesla's assertion that he would run 'virtual' device in his mind and later inspect them for wear or faults, but again, this is anecdotal. It's also pointless, as a good engineer would look at a design and pick out a wear point without the need for 'simulations'.

I enjoyed the references to the original canon, that's always fun.

Good fun, good entertainment, but I worry it's falling into the trap of being too self reverential (not a typo) and it might be better to solve some intriguing (and related to original stories) cases and drop the overarching 'Moriarty' thing. Kick him permanently of the falls and move on.


*I have and the crow in the middle of the powder-snow 10th floor still has me baffled. Why did I put that there again?
 
Reverential, or self-referential? Either trait is a recipe for a show about to disappear up its own arse, if it's not careful.

Having dropped off during the original showing, I managed to spot it on BBC3 last night (it was already partway through) and stayed awake until the end. Between my 2 efforts at watching it, I think I only missed about 5 minutes in the middle.

Anyhow, I think I can safely say I was entertained, infuriated and confused in approximately equal measure*. Which was the real Sherlock again? Both? Neither? And Moriarty as portrayed in Sherlock must be the most hammy, camp villain since John Simm's interpretation of the Master in Dr Who.



*Actually, it was more like 50% entertained, 15% infuriated and 30% confused, which I suppose counts as a win for the show. The remaining 5% left me so nonplussed that I wouldn't even call it confusion...
 
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Peripart said:
Reverential, or self-referential? Either trait is a recipe for a show about to disappear up its own arse, if it's not careful.
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I used 'reverential' on purpose...:D but you're not wrong.
 
THE handwritten manuscript for one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s last Sherlock Holmes mysteries has been sold at auction for £188,000.

Conan Doyle’s The Problem of Thor Bridge was published in 1922, some 35 years after the Edinburgh-born writer’s detective first appeared in print.

It is best known for including the first reference to Dr Watson’s tin dispatch-box, which is kept in a bank vault and crammed with notes on Holmes’s unsolved cases.

The 48-page manuscript, signed by the writer, went under the hammer at Bonhams in New York on Monday. It was sold to an anonymous collector in Europe for £188,000.

The Problem of Thor Bridge was first published in The Strand magazine. In it, Holmes is called in by the husband of a murdered woman who insists that his governess is not the killer despite overwhelming evidence.

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/rare-sherlock-holmes-manuscript-sells-for-188k-1-4098882
 
Apologies if this has already been posted somewhere in the last 21 page, I didn't even know Gene Wilder had made a Sherlock Holmes spoof, bug eyed Marty Feldman's also in it so I'm a bit excited to watch this one ..

 
Swifty said:
Apologies if this has already been posted somewhere in the last 21 page, I didn't even know Gene Wilder had made a Sherlock Holmes spoof, bug eyed Marty Feldman's also in it so I'm a bit excited to watch this one ..

Click to expand...

I remember it as being pretty good.
 
The films Gene Wilder directed are usually trying a bit too hard to be films Mel Brooks directed, but his Holmes spoof is probably the best of them.
 
I've lived in Plymouth, but I didn't know of the ACD connection:
Blue plaque on Plymouth house to mark home of Sherlock creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
By Sarah_Herald | Posted: April 29, 2016

A plaque to commemorate the creator of the world's most famous fictional detective will make its home on a city mansion.
Earlier this year residents at 6 Elliot Terrace on the Hoe applied to install a blue plaque for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the entrance of the Grade II listed property.

During his stay in Plymouth in 1882 the Scottish writer and physician lodged with his partner in medicine and former classmate, George Budd, at the waterfront house.
Doyle went on to write some of the world's most gripping crime stories, generally considered milestones in the field of that genre.
That's why planning permission was applied for to attach a blue plaque to his former home's front wall, which is now split into flats.

Plymouth City Council this week gave the plans the green light.
Talks are still underway to decide what text will appear on the commemorative sign, but it will marks Doyle's date of birth and death, 1858-1930, and that he 'lodged here with Dr Budd, his medical partner'.

The city practice Doyle worked at with Budd was on Durnford Street, where a Chinese supermarket now stands.
When it was a car dealership, a blue plaque for Doyle was attached to the wall inside detailing the relationship with himself and the doctor.
Pamela Magill, a Blue Badge tour guide, said this plaque went missing when the building was demolished, and has been waiting ever since for a new one to be reinstated.
"We have to remember all these people," she said. "I am very pleased there will be a new plaque."

Doyle described 6 Elliot Terrace as a spacious residence with an "imposing sweep of steps" up to the door above which were five or six storeys with "pinnacles and flagstaff" on the top.
There were about thirty rooms, and the ground floor rooms and hall were on a "spectacular scale".

It is believed Doyle's experiences with Dr Budd had a great influence on him – giving up a medical career for writing.
"Budd's erratic yet ingenious personality is used in many characters in his stories," the planning application says. "It has been said that Sherlock Holmes was based on a combination of Dr Budd and Dr Joseph Bell, his mentor at Edinburgh."

It adds: "The applicant and neighbours are regularly approached by visitors/tourists asking if the building is 'really where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived?' A plaque would confirm this rather than be dependent on chance conversation."

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Aut...es-make-home/story-29198216-detail/story.html
 
What are our favourite renderings of `The Hound of the Baskervilles`? (Not only is it the most fortean of the duo's adventures, it's the most escapist as well - like a Bank Holiday day trip).

If you want a really faithful one then check out the Russian attempt: Sobaka Baskervillei (1981) starring Vasily Livanov (and no doubt available somewhere with subtitles). It's damned good -Livonov was awarded an MBE for his efforts in 2006. For me, however, it underplays the essential Gothic element of the atmosphere a tad too much.

Recently I checked out the Tom Baker version (also early eighties) on youtube. I had always avoided this, imagining Baker to be just reprising another certain famous role (his Doctor was always too silly for me). But here he reigns himself in, and -together with some other capable actors - does a serviceable job of it - and those desolate moors are given their due.

Speaking of which: we have some Devonshire people on these threads.What's the deal with Dartmoor these days? Is any of it still the remote, menacing boggy place that Conan -Doyle so ably etched onto our collective consciousness? And is Grimpen Mire a real area?
 
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