The Kingdom of Sherlock: An Explanatory Discourse

Last week, I posted a rather cryptic, italicized blogpost talking about the kingdom of Sherlock. While I am quite pleased with this particular post, I acknowledged to myself while writing it that to an outsider unfamiliar with the television show Sherlock, it wouldn't make much sense. Admittedly, I don't have a very extensive readership and the majority of my readers are familiar with the show, but I figured I might as well do an explanatory follow-up post anyway. And there are other things to talk about.....




In 2009, Robert Downey Jr. starred in a wild, crazy, slow-motion-packed, artistic, and well-received movie, Sherlock Holmes. To the best of my knowledge, it had been some time since the last reimagining of the character, but evidently Downey's reinterpretation was awesome enough to spark a new Sherlock frenzy in the fiction-following public. Just a year after the Downey movie, Sherlock began airing on the BBC.


(There would be a picture here, but Google is being moody and won't let me put one in.) (Although probably you'd already figured out that Google is being moody if you noticed the wonky spacing and other formatting issues of my last few posts.) (I hate Google, by the way.)







Arguably one of the most creative adaptions of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories yet, Sherlock takes place in the modern world, with nicotine patches replacing pipes, a blog replacing stories published in magazines, and advanced microscopes and analysis machines replacing Sherlock's famous mishmash of test tubes and metal rods. Too modern to call each other "Holmes" and "Watson", the two main characters go by Sherlock and John; yet in spite of these radical changes, the plotlines still manage to remain impressively similar to Doyle's, with each episode finding its inspiration in one of the most famous stories. Four years later, the show has gained a massive, devoted fandom, critical acclaim, a few prestigious awards, and even its very own cruddy American rip-off, Elementary (featuring a short, blond, bearded Sherlock Holmes and an Asian-American female Watson) (I wish I was kidding).




Well, there're the facts. Now on to the opinions.




Ahem.



I. LOVE. THIS. SHOW.




At the current moment, I can find nothing whatsoever on this show to sincerely complain about. I'll see and hear various people commenting on Sherlock's "sociopathic" behaviors, saying he's cruel or dysfunctional or what-have-you, and I can only look at them quizzically. I hear people gripe about the writing, complaints like "It's so sad!" or "It's corny!" or "It's not like this in the books!" and I can only shake my head and wonder what's wrong with some people. I could go on. The point is, I love the writing and the directing, the sets and the acting. And the CHARACTERS. Sherlock. Moriarty. Mycroft. John. They're all simply perfect.




But believe me when I say that being a fan of Sherlock is no easy fate.




The three episodes of Series 1 aired, as I mentioned previously, in 2010. Series 2's three episodes weren't released until 2012. Both series ended in cliffhangers. While I hold the minority opinion that Series 1's cliffhanger was rather more stressful than Series 2's, I wasn't as much of a fan of the show when I first saw Series 1. In fact, while I always loved the show, I didn't really get thoroughly obsessed with it until last summer, when I introduced it to my best friend, Aloisa. Since then, we've been waiting impatiently along with the rest of the fandom for the arrival of Series 3 and the resolution of Series 2's dreadful finale.



Series 3, Episode 1, "The Empty Hearse", debuted in America a week ago today at 10 p.m. Aloisa came over a few hours before the episode started, and we spent the interim time trying to remain calm (as if that was ever going to happen) before finally breathlessly settling in with Kit-Kats and hot chocolate to watch.




Maybe it was because we were watching together, or maybe it was because of the excitement, or maybe it was just a magnificent episode. Whatever the case, I think that as of right now "The Empty Hearse" is my favorite episode of Sherlock. But who knows. Maybe that opinion will change tonight.
Episode 2, "The Sign of Three", starts in just over three hours. SQUEE.




I guess I haven't really explained why being a Sherlock fan is so difficult, so I'll get to it now: each series of Sherlock is only three episodes, with long hiatuses in between. This last hiatus was especially long, thanks to the involvement of stars Benedict the Brilliant and Martin the Magnanimous in the Hobbit movies (which are good enough that I can almost forgive them) (almost). The excessive joy that comes from finally seeing new episodes is somewhat dampened whenever I accidentally remember the fact that a mere week from today we'll be handed a new cliffhanger and go right back to desperately waiting for new episodes.




I read an article a few days ago that mentioned the words of Steven Moffat, one of the show's writers and creators, who reportedly said at some point that a series of Sherlock will never be more than three episodes, because, supposedly since each episode is about ninety minutes, making an episode of Sherlock is like making a movie.




By that logic, us lazy Americans with our twenty-two or twenty-four-episode seasons are cranking out eleven or twelve movies (since American television shows are forty-five minutes long) every year, while you're making three movies every other year.




I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Steven Moffat.




But I choose not to think about that now.




Instead, I am now going to commence my anticipation of another night of excitement, hot chocolate, Kit-Kat consumption, and glorious fangirling.




Long live Sherlock.




~Pearl Clayton