On the logic of Sherlock's world

As I alluded to back in my review of Sherlock (the third season that is) I was more than a bit disappointed in how the season's "grand villain" was handled because it just didn't make any logical sense to me. Logic is a bit part of the setting for any story, it determines how the world works, how character's react, what is and isn't possible (which informs the audience of what may or may not happen) and when you have a story where this isn't made clear usually it becomes a plot point in and of itself. So when Sherlock, which had already done a good job at establishing that it was set in a world like ours, just one with a genius detective in it, started to have it's villain act differently, well, it meant that the world stopped working for me too.

(spoilers ahead)

TV Series Review: Sherlock (season three)

Goodness it's been a long time since this show started, as the opening credits rolled by I was thinking that way back when this show first aired I had just started dabbling in video but by now I could do a fair recreation of the opening on my own if I put my mind to it (and put in quite a few hours of work that is). Back then barely anyone had heard of this show too and now it's everywhere. Before the first episode aired I was chatting with my mom and she said that they were taping it, my aunt's sister said that they would be watching it when I got home that evening if I wanted to join them, I started watching it while babysitting since my charge was already in bed, and when the parents came back, before the episode ended, they said that they were taping it too! Really, now everyone and their cat is watching the show (no seriously apparently my cat loves it when my mom watches Sherlock since it means he can sit in her lap for a full hour and a half without being moved).

Sherlock (season three)

Documentary Review: How Sherlock Changed the World

Someone on twitter pointed out this little documentary to me and, since I'm waiting for the PBS broadcast of Sherlock which won't start for another few weeks, it seemed like a fun little diversion in the meantime. And I was curious, considering that the science Sherlock Holmes used, based on what I remembered from reading the books, seemed so similar to modern day forensics there's no way Arthur Conan Doyle made up all of that, right?


How Sherlock Changed the World

TV Series Review: Elementary

I have to admit, I'm really curious what must have been in the water a few years back when writers suddenly started going "you know what we haven't had in a while? SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES, we should make some!" I suspect that stuff like this is actually part of a cycle, which would also explain weird coincidences like having multiple films in one year based on a certain fairy tale that hasn't been on the silver screen in a number of years, although that didn't make me any less leary when it was announced that there was going to be another tv show based off of Sherlock Holmes, set in the US, and they were making Watson female ("oh great, romance ahoooooy!"). I did change my feelings a tiny bit when I heard that an Asian-American actress had been cast as Joan Watson, the fact that a show was willing to give a non-white actor a leading role gave me some hope that they actually knew what they were doing, and then the first episode leaked and tumblr adored it. Well, not some of the Sherlock fans, but a lot of people did and that sealed the deal, I was going to give this a chance after all and pray that it turned out amazing.


Elementary

Summary: Joan Watson is a sober companion in NYC who helps recovering addicts transistion back into everyday life and her latest client is a British man who is recovering from a heroin addiction, Sherlock Holmes. He's less than thrilled about having a sober companion especially since he's already come up with his own plan for how to transition back into everyday life and stay focused, by working as a consulting detective for the NYPD which means that Joan needs to tag along and in the process discovers that she has a talent for noticing the details and fitting them into the larger puzzle as well.

The Good: Well to cut to the chase, I loved this show. It completely avoided the biggest thing I was worried about, changing Watson to a woman in order to have a romance with Holmes, entirely and instead we got a really good series with a mixed gender leading couple that weren't a couple at all, I liked that! Plus it had a fairy diverse cast of returning characters AND even though things such as prostitution came up several times none of the characters ever made "prostitution is WRONG" comments, the characters just dealt with the cases making it one of the least problematic things I've seen in a long time. The show also managed to have a small overarching story that set everything in motion and ended the story but at the heart of the story it was about Sherlock and Joan and how the two of them grow which was pretty amazing. This is one of the most human versions of Sherlock I've seen, even if he makes a lot of misteps by the end he's apologizing when he realizes, or has it pointed out to him, what he's done wrong and from the first episode Joan is not afraid to call him out on it. Also, I think this is the first time I've seen a Sherlock Holmes story where Watson goes beyond being the audience's point of view character and rises to become a detective themselves, something that amazes me because it's so obvious in retrospect. It was a rather pleasant surprise to see that this series wasn't just about Sherlock getting over his addiction and becoming a better person at the same time but that it was also about Joan moving farther away from her own past and finding something she really took pleasure in.

The Bad: I am a little worried about what the series will do next, if it had ended her I think it would have had a perfectly fine ending and as such I wonder how they'll make the characters continue to change. I saw a snippet of an interview, I think with Lucy Lui (Joan) who said that they were trying/hoping to do more multi-parters in the second season which would be a great idea but I'm also worried that now that the show has proven to be successful more people will try to meddle with it (since I'm told that's what happens with successful shows, everyone wants a finger in the pie and then too many cooks ruin a good stew after all). But, even after being burned by Once Upon A Time's second season I'm going to remain optimistic that the show will continue to be as good and won't simply cover the same ideas over again.

The Audio/Visuals: This being a series that is a procedural crime drama in current day NYC means that there wasn't a lot that could go wrong with the look or sound of this show so I had no problems there. Although again, the show is so contemporary that as long as nothing looked like something I could never, ever theoretically see in the US I wasn't going to have a problem and nothing came even close to that.


So, giving this 4 out of 5 stars and heck yes I'm watching the second season. Unfortunately it's only sort of streaming online, much like certain deals on hulu, CBS only streams the last four episodes (to air) on their site (and none on hulu at all) so at this point I would recommend that people sit tight and hope that it shows up on Netflix soon. Heck, as soon as it does I am shoving several people I know to that page and having them watch it immediately, fingers crossed that this happens sooner rather than later.

TV Series Review: Sherlock (season two)

Compared to the rest of the internet I'm rather late here but, considering the last episode only aired (legally) in the US last Sunday I'm not doing too bad actually. When my mom and I first heard that there was going to be a five month gap between the BBC and American showings (and I'm rather unhappy at their "we have to edit it to fit American format" excuse, the show is on PBS which doesn't even have commercial breaks!) we guessed that we probably wouldn't be able to wait and did watch the first two episodes in March but weren't able to get to all three because of their length (each episode is a long, hour and a half long), thankfully PBS has them legally streaming on their website for now (abet cut down by eight minutes or so for each episode, I really don't understand why they can't at least leave the full episodes online where there are no time restrictions on it AND they make money off of the commercials).

Sherlock (season two)

Summary: Following last season’s harrowing cliff-hanger, Sherlock (with John in tow) tackle three more mysteries, based and expanded upon the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle canon, but with Moriarty afoot there might be some things that even Sherlock cannot work out in time.

The Good: I'm not fond of villains like Moriarty, I like them to have more of a motive than what boils down to "I was bored" but here he was just so insane underneath it all, although his last scenes of the season felt a bit contrived, like Moffat and Gatniss had been written into a corner and didn't have a really good way to get out. All of the mysteries were interesting and stayed true to the spirit of the original stories and the new elements worked in well (especially in the case of the Baskervilles) and Sherlock's explanations for the cases make enough sense to be plausible. In short, if you liked the first season (and if you haven't you really shouldn't watch this one first) you'll enjoy this one quite well.  

The Bad: While Sherlock is far from the first mystery series to have this problem it was tiresome after a while to see just how dumb and incompetent everyone around Sherlock is and they don’t even seem stupid by comparison, it really seems like the London police force has exceedingly low standards for general intelligence among it’s employees*. I had issues with Irene Adler as well, mainly since she deviated so much from the original canon (where she was a clever and quick thinking woman who was the one person ever to catch Holmes off guard, here whatever cleverness she has is buried under UST with Sherlock^) and I’m also tired of the “sexually confident women can wear skimpy clothes because they’re that happy with themselves!” idea, it just rings like a hollow excuse for fanservice and that was supposed to be a plot point early on.

The Audio: This may be just me but whenever I hear one of the main themes played in Sherlock I always feel as if it’s drawing inspiration from other Sherlock Holmes adaptations. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all, and it’s possible that I’ve seen so many series I’m trying to see connections that aren’t there (by my own count I’ve seen roughly 60 hours of Sherlock Holmes tv series/movies), but the music for this series has always seemed like a perfect and seamless fit here.

The Visuals: The show has created a very distinct looking style of cinematography with many quick shots, overlaid with text to give the viewer insight into Sherlock’s methods, often in close-up with a very shallow depth of focus, combined with some tilt-shift shots of London every now and then as transition shots, which serves to re-emphasis that Sherlock has a strange mind that sees the world in odd ways. As I believe I mentioned last time, I’ve seen a few of these quirks appear in various Doctor Who episodes but never with the frequency that they are seen here and they do keep the show interesting in a unique manner.

One thing that does puzzle me is that I saw a lot of praise for Molly online once the show finished it's British run and I'm not entirely sure why. People mentioned a speech of hers and I'm wondering if that was part of the 8 minutes that were cut, she did have a speech but it just didn't seem, well, strong enough to merit that much discussion I saw. My mom and I feel like a scene with her was also cut for a few other, spoilery, reasons, if anyone has a list of the cuts made to the US version (for any of the episodes) please share since I would love to know.

*I feel like I’ve had this problem with Moffat’s work before too, he loves to build up his main characters but doesn’t quite seem how to flesh out the side characters as well 

^funny enough I don’t have a problem with Sherlock being interested in her, mainly because being asexual does not mean you can’t have romantic feelings for someone and Mycroft says point blank in that episode that Sherlock was a romantic. Holmes originally was certainly both asexual and aromantic but, possibly this is after seeing the two recent American Sherlock Holmes films and how they played with Irene Adler I’m willing to give the series a pass on that point

Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

WOW, sorry about that folks, it's exam week for me over here so my schedule is a bit different from normal and I completely forgot about updating until half an hour to midnight last night and decided it would be best to simply push everything back a day (so the review of Chihayafuru will go up tomorrow and from there everything should be back on track). This might not have been helped by the fact that I found the sequel Sherlock Holmes movie to be the most boring one I've seen all semester so let's get to the review to elaborate on that.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Summary: John Watson is about to move out of his apartment, shared with his friend Sherlock Holmes, as he gets married, despite Holmes’ mixed feelings on the matter. But the honeymoon will have to wait as Moriarty, the one person to ever truly equal Holmes and the man responsible for the events of the first film, launches another grand scheme that Holmes must prevent lest it plunge all of Europe into war.

The Good: Making Moriarty into a weapons dealer was interesting, I don’t actually recall what his exact profession was in the original was but here it worked well with the story and did explain how Moriarty wielded such power. And, quibbles about the setting aside, considering that Moriarty is a thread to all of Europe (not just Great Britain) the choice to have Holmes and Watson travel outside of England was a good one and showing the extent of his plans certainly helped out. I also enjoyed this movie's "designated female side character (who is never super vital to the plot" Simza much better than Irene Adler last time around although she, as was every character that wasn't Holmes, Watson, or Moriarity, felt largely unnecessary by the end.

The Bad: I did actually enjoy the first movie for the action-y fun it had but here it tried much to hard to have a “serious” plot which didn’t work so I didn’t enjoy this film. It didn't feel like a mystery, and when you are adapting a story about one of the greatest fictional detectives that’s a problem, and it was just very hard to take everyone’s schemes seriously. From the Indiana Jones-like secret passages to the “the fate of Europe rests in the hands of one man” deal (while Moriarty profession makes sense it still doesn’t explain how he has that much power), everything just felt very fake and movie-ish and it’s hard to take a story seriously enough to get attached to it and care about it.

The Audio: While the some of the music felt very similar to the first movie’s music it just didn’t grab me the same way. Actually, a lot of it felt rather boring with some more modern sounding pieces mixed in with the more bouncy “Sherlock Holmes” themes plus some generic “gypsy music” as well. I’ve been listening to a lot of Hans Zimmerman music lately actually, between the films I’ve seen and a film score radio I set up on Pandora, and this just didn’t impress me as much as his work normally does.  

The Visuals: Done in the same style as the first, the setting looked very gritty and dirty and, while Victorian Europe did have it’s not so pleasant underside for sure, it feels out of place for Sherlock Holmes since the original cases always had a veneer of respectability to them, not stories that dragged Holmes back and forth across the underworld. I question a number of the costume choices here, specifically the ladies clothing (which I remember having a problem with in the first movie as well) but sometimes everything was just so grimy I couldn’t tell. The bullet time was used sparingly which I thought was a good choice, it did convey how Holmes saw the world well and wasn’t used so often that it felt merely like a gimmick.

In short, I have seen quite a few Sherlock Holmes adaptations (these movies, Sherlock, all four seasons plus all the specials of the Granada series which covered 42 of the original 60 stories) and this is the weakest I've come across. The actors never manage to feel like the characters, the setting is weak, the plot never feels like a mystery plot and if they were to ever make a third film (at this point I hope everyone simply moves onto other projects) I'll be sure to avoid it. 

TV Series Review: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

And now for the fourth and final season of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series. It's also the shortest of the series with only six episodes (Jeremy Brett's health was pretty poor by this time, I've even heard some say that shooting this series is what killed him) but considering just how many of the SH stories this entire series managed to cover I don't feel unhappy about that. So, how does this season stack up to the previous ones?

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Summary: There are a few more mysteries for Sherlock to solve and they are just as complex and intriguing as the first mysteries.

The Good: I was rather interested to see that we had two stories with very little Watson and one with very little Holmes (Mycroft filled in there) and yet the stories didn't seem any weaker for it. Even though the show is called Sherlock Holmes I still think that's rather good storytelling to leave important characters out and still make the stories work (and the one without Holmes was heavily modified from the original as well yet still worked fairly well, although my complaints in The Bad do apply to this episode in particular). All in all, the mysteries in this series (and not just this season) were solid and actually could be guessed if you were familiar with how Doyle writes yet were never too easy. As a mystery show it excelled and some episodes also worked well as a historical show (ironically since Doyle was writing about the current time) and I would heartily recommend the show to anyone who has enjoyed some of the stories in book form.

The Bad: After the trouble I had following some of the mysteries in the third season I made sure to keep a close eye on the show and I was still baffled by a few mysteries in the end (worse was that some of them were so changed from their original incarnation that wikipedia wasn't able to help me). So, while it is great that the show makes fullest use of it's visual medium, this is not a show to be watched while multi-tasking*.

The Music: As I've mentioned before, this whole series makes good use of appropriate musical placement and the times when music isn't used in an episode. The whole series has been consistently good about this and I really don't have much else to say about it, it's there and done well.

The Visuals: It's really apparent here that Jeremy Brett isn't doing so well, although ironically enough his ill look works well for Holmes considering this is the last season. As mentioned above, the whole series had very good video work and film quality as well as realistic setting and dress. Nothing to complain or nitpick about here, it was well done and that's about all too it.

I must admit, after seeing this good a mystery show I feel a bit spoiled since it blows almost every other mystery show I've seen out of the water** and plot twists in regular shows seem much more predictable now as well. Like I said above, I would recommend this show to anyone who enjoyed the original books but I would probably advise them to look up the episodes regarding stories they liked/were confused by since watching the whole series would take a while. All four seasons are streaming on netflix so go out and watch them now, the first episode (A Scandal in Bohemia) is a well known and well done episode to start off with.



*Which is what I normally do to any show with an English language track. How else do you think I manage to watch so much stuff?
**COUGHGOSICKGOUGH

TV Series review: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

I will admit, I watched this season of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series back in November when I was also busy with my NaNo so I wasn’t paying the closest attention to these stories. Thankfully Wikipedia has summaries of all the Sherlock Holmes stories and those were enough to jog my memory but if this review seems a little bare bones, it is. Also, this is the third season of the show and I’m starting to run out of things to say (makes me worried if I’ll have anything to say at all by the time I get to the fourth and final season).

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

Summary: Sherlock Holmes continues to investigate the various and myriad strange cases brought to him and Dr. John Watson attempts to understand what the great detective is thinking.

The Good: One thing that Sherlock Holmes does better than many mystery shows is that the murders in this show are actually strange and confusing. You may be able to guess whodunit but you probably won’t be able to guess how they did it or better yet, why. Most of this credit goes to the source material of course (I do wonder sometimes how Doyle came up with all of this stuff) but the show did expand on several stories to make longer episodes and the writers adapted the stories very well. I’m afraid that Sherlock Holmes has spoiled me, I might not be able to go back to mere locked room murder mysteries and such, at least in Sherlock Holmes the locked room mysteries really are creative.

The Bad: If you don’t pay attention to the entire story you will be horribly confused since, unlike the books, not everything is explicitly stated in the end. This is no fault of the show, they are actually making good use of the visual medium by employing “show don’t tell” (and the episodes would be even longer if they don’t), but merely a warning that blogging while only half paying attention to this show does not work so well. Also, unlike the first season which choose a good episode to end on (ie, one that also worked as a stopping point in the story) this episode neither starts nor ends with an episode that feels like a beginning/ending. True this is an episodic series but I still think that the episodes could have been arranged a little better.

The Music: As I’ve said before, on Sherlock Holmes it’s the time when there isn’t any people talking or background noises that’s key to the story. A lot of times I have the show playing in the background while I type up other stuff but when I realize that it’s gone quiet I make sure to switch over since that’s usually when a key visual clue is shown. The show integrates it’s visuals and soundtrack with more care than most shows do, many times I think they just slap in some music so the scene doesn’t get too dull, and it is nice to see all the extra effort that went into it.

The Visuals: I think this was the season when Holmes accidently did some drugs (testing out a hypthosis about how some people have been killed, although this may have been the second season) and other than that creepily trippy experience everything looks fine and normal. Which is to say, good video quality for the period (late 1980s), good use of scenery and costumes, it really does work very well as a historical show, but then again I’m a sucker for a nice looking proper English garden.

I was surprised when the season started up at just how haggard Jeremy Brett (Sherlock Holmes) looked. I had heard that his health took a turn for the worst around this time (and that working on the show may have killed him, but the last two seasons were spread out over so many years that I find this a little hard to believe) but the change between the end of the second season and this one was staggering, I can hardly imagine any actor or actress today working when they look like they just crawled out of their own grave.

TV Series Review: The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Just FYI there are two more Granada Sherlock Holmes series after this (one that's nine episodes and one that's six) so expect to see a few more of these since I do blog tv shows by season (and since these were filmed over eight or ten years I think that's really the best thing to do here).
So, this covers the season called The Return of Sherlock Holmes as well as the two full length episodes Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles (both of which were longer short stories and wikipedia listed them along with this season).

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

 Summary: Sherlock Holmes, against all odds, has managed to return to his abode in Baker Street and is again dealing with crimes that baffle everyone else.

The Good: Good place to start up for the series and, given the episodic nature of the stories, it really could end anywhere in the series and feel completed. But that's not to say all the episodes feel totally disjointed, there's one or two cases where Holmes will do something to Watson (like, wake him up early) and you see Watson do the same thing back an episode or two later which I thought was a nice touch.

The Bad: The stories chosen from the series come from all over the books, so I haven't read many of them recently, but I found myself much more interested in the stories I hadn't read before. The show can be a bit slow moving at times and I'm finding that part of the reason I pay closer attention to anime is because of reading subtitles so take that out and I'm likely to do all sorts of other stuff while I'm watching.

The Music: I noticed here, and I suspect that was the case in the first season too, there isn't much background music in this series but there's almost always background noise of some sort. And whenever it goes quiet that certainly a sign to sit up and pay close attention. So it's a rather subtle approach but I think it works very well.

The Visuals: You know, there are times when I watch this series (this section was made in '86 I think) and I honestly think that the film looks better than Buffy does at parts (which was made a good ten years later). Possibly not the best comparison (SH has fewer episodes and I don't know how the budgets compare) but since I watch both of these on Netflix at the same size it's interesting to notice. Even in the dark scenes there isn't tons and tons of grain obscuring the scene (which does happen a few times in Buffy which is why I noticed) and again, the setting fits the time period very well. It's not the most colorful or different setting to look at but it works very well.


So, it's a solid show but maybe a bit too slow paced for me these days (more likely I just need to stop multi-tasking). But I still look forward to seeing the rest of the series, I'll just try to be less distracted and see if that makes a difference.

TV Series Review: Sherlock Holmes (Granada, Season 1)

Up next is The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I found someone doing fanart for the series on dA and, since so many people were saying they loved the series in the comments (seriously, this made the front page which is a few hundred favs in 24 hours), asked my mom if she had heard of it and she had and thought it was a great series. This is the Granada tv series by the way and this is actually the first series they did in 1984 (wasn't until I looked at the bottom of the Netflix page that I realized there were three more seasons over the following decade). So, onto the review!

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Summary: Based on various short stories, Sherlock Holmes solves crime and Dr. Watson assists in whatever way he can and pick up a few tricks from Holmes on the way. It's a pretty faithful adaption of the book stories.

The Good:Jeremy Brett is an amazing Sherlock Holmes here. He really managed to capture how Holmes is this brilliant man but a bit disconnected with the world. I can see why so many people love the series now, Brett is certainly one of the, if not, the most important driving force in the show and he nails it. David Burke also made an excellent Dr. Watson, very intelligent and quick to pick up on things in his own right (heck, just a few episodes in he's doing Holmes like deductions, just not getting everything) and understanding Holmes' various moods. I found myself liking a number of the one shot characters more in the show here than I did in the books, most of them came off as "Hey, something strange is going on, here are all the facts I know and I even did some searching on my own!" And this applies to both the female and male characters, I thought that most of them came off as strong and confident characters within their own stories. And I had a pleasant surprise that some of the stories were ones I hadn't gotten to yet in the books, always nice to see a mystery story when you don't know the mystery.

The Bad: Most of my problems with the series trace back to the original stories, like how they are completely disconnected (no callbacks even). I'm used to watching shows that are monster-of-the-week/slice-of-life but even those have a overarching plot/theme to it. SH has the bones of that, I really would have loved to have seen Moriarty referenced earlier in the story and I'm having a hard time remembering when he even appeared in the original books (bear in mind that he is Holmes' arch-nemesis, one would think the man should show up more than once especially if the characters act as if Holmes has brought him up many times before). Even though the season finale is a good wrapping up place and feels well done it manages to also feel too sudden, started out like all the other cases and then bam, over. Another nitpick with the show itself, the cases were all presented in almost the exact same fashion. Opening credits, few minutes that have to do with the crime, cut to Holmes and Watson, client comes, spends a good while explaining the situation, everyone goes to investigate, and then Holems reveals all in the last few minutes. I know the original stories were much the same but, since they did take advantage of the different medium to change the format some I wish they'd been able to switch around things more a few times.

The Music: The opening theme really grew on me and I wonder if, like anime openings, if there is a longer version of it somewhere. And the show made good use of when to use or not use background music or even background sounds. Usually I'd have another tab or two open when I watched the show, since there is a lot of talking so I didn't have to watch much, but I learned pretty fast that when it all goes quiet to switch back and see what's going on.

The Visuals: Being a tv series does make this less exposition heavy (even if there still is a ton) and I thought it actually made some of the stories clearer (like the Red Headed League, I understood it in the original book but seeing Holmes and Watson sketch out a map just made it work better). Visuals all over the series are good, English countrysides look English, there are a few cases where we see Holmes' powers of disguise and that works well, and all the extras in the background also added to the whole feeling.

I'd recommend this to anyone who likes Sherlock Holmes and episode or two to someone who is reading Sherlock Holmes and isn't quite getting it. The visual aspect makes it a bit easier to follow some of the stories and it's a very good adaptation. Currently I'm alternating between a season of this and a season of Buffy so expect quite a few more reviews for both of them.