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Slightly misleading heading, but nevertheless….
Without wishing to witter on about stuff I had been enthusiastic about the BBC's update of the Sherlock Holmes mythos: until, alas, Cumberbatch and Freeman (or rather Gatiss and Moffat - the writers) over-estimated their talent and took on "Hound of the Baskervilles". By gum, this was a turkey. The interplay between Cumberbatch and Freeman was as good as ever; but the reworked plot was a grade-one stinker of the kind that meant the lavatory into which they had deposited it needed de-fumigating by an industrial process as yet unknown to telly producers.
Perhaps "Hound of the Baskervilles" is just one of those Conan Doyle stories that can never be updated successfully.
I can only hope this was a temporary blip, and the series itself hasn't actually jumped the shark. This would be a crying shame, as, up until now, this series has been intelligent, modern, and defying of my original desire to hate everything about it. I mean to say: I like it when I'm prepared to loathe something in extremis, and then find that I appreciate it more than can be reasonably accounted for. But if I'd seen "Hound" as the first episode of the modernised Holmes, I'd never have taken another look at it, and would have sneered righteously at anyone who championed it and thought them deficient in taste, understanding, and reason.
Never mind. Here's hoping the next episode rather makes up for it all. On to the Reichenbach Fall.
Without wishing to witter on about stuff I had been enthusiastic about the BBC's update of the Sherlock Holmes mythos: until, alas, Cumberbatch and Freeman (or rather Gatiss and Moffat - the writers) over-estimated their talent and took on "Hound of the Baskervilles". By gum, this was a turkey. The interplay between Cumberbatch and Freeman was as good as ever; but the reworked plot was a grade-one stinker of the kind that meant the lavatory into which they had deposited it needed de-fumigating by an industrial process as yet unknown to telly producers.
Perhaps "Hound of the Baskervilles" is just one of those Conan Doyle stories that can never be updated successfully.
I can only hope this was a temporary blip, and the series itself hasn't actually jumped the shark. This would be a crying shame, as, up until now, this series has been intelligent, modern, and defying of my original desire to hate everything about it. I mean to say: I like it when I'm prepared to loathe something in extremis, and then find that I appreciate it more than can be reasonably accounted for. But if I'd seen "Hound" as the first episode of the modernised Holmes, I'd never have taken another look at it, and would have sneered righteously at anyone who championed it and thought them deficient in taste, understanding, and reason.
Never mind. Here's hoping the next episode rather makes up for it all. On to the Reichenbach Fall.
