Watson, our tent has been stolen......

    In a break from my usual routine of films and games I am now going to do my first proper review of a TV show. Sherlock was released on the BBC a couple of years ago and I managed to miss all of it on TV, I did manage to catch a re-run later on though and ended up buying the DVD to watch all of it. There is currently a second series available to buy too however I have only seen the second series on TV and only once, so this will focus on the first series; as when I originally wrote it the second series had not yet been released. I will try to bring in the little I can remember of the second series in my conclusions. Now to make this easier for myself I have broken down the review into four parts, being how it fairs as a TV show, how good an adaptation of the source material it is. The entertainment value will be third, finishing with the stay ability of the show.

     So how is it as a TV show?

Overall I would say that it is a damn fine show, it is fun, exciting and very well made. I have to give special compliments to the casting of this program. Holmes is excellently played by Benedict Cumberbatch, but I was really blown away by the supporting cast, Martin Freeman’s Watson is as fine a Watson a long term fan could have asked for and Inspector Lastrade as played by Rupert Graves was an excellent choice and possibly my favourite of the show. The skill of the casting director reared its head again in series two with the casting of Laura Pulver as Irene Adler. Along with the major characters the villains showed accuracy of the casters eye. Moriarty as played by Andrew Scott was fun, young and full of energy creating a different and much more menacing antithesis to Holmes. Beyond the main man I felt the casting of Phil Davis as “the cabby” in the first episode helped create a great villain both intimidating and sympathetic with an open friendly demeanour, a dangerous enemy.

    

    The casting being the major good part of the show there were other details of the show that helped elevate its status, primarily it never outstays its welcome. The episodes all run at around 90 minutes, each long enough to go into the necessary detail to tell a good story while not being so long that they become dull or overcomplicated. Mixed with great pacing (especially in the series 1 finale “The Great Game”) you ended up with a series comfortable to watch and reflect on.

     

    However there were some issues, the major being the series story; the individual episodes were all wonderfully written and excellently made. When put together though the problem arose of the super powered villain. Each episode was related to Moriarty, and for me this seemed to give him too much power. I felt that if only two episodes were related to him then Holmes would have had more room to move around the world created by Conan Doyle in the original stories. With Moriarty controlling each episode the series gains too much direction and Holmes is limited to a small section of a vast and detailed world of criminals and misunderstandings that defines the original material.

So that’s how it fairs as a show, good but not perfect, but how is it as an adaptation?

Now I am a giant fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, I have read them since a young age and have seen most adaptations of his numerous books. ITV have their old but long running series based on the stories, and Hammer house of horror even did a decent Hound of the Baskervilles. So in short I know what should be there and I know that the show had a hard job living up to some of the other adaptations. Adding to all this the show is also a modernisation so I knew going in it would not be the most faithful adaptation to the books, many of the adaptive issues therefore are simply due to the change in times.

One of the major changes is definitely due to the change in setting, Holmes is no longer patriotic, a change I can explain, England no longer had the Empire and is now just a shadow of a country, there is little reason to be patriotic these days and the loss of such a trait is in no way upsetting. The change in his character that does annoy and upset me though has nothing to do with the times. In the show Holmes is an arrogant unsympathetic sociopath, even referring to himself as one. In the stories while Holmes does not really like people he knows how to be around them, he offers sympathy, holds an empathetic side and is in no way arrogant. Occasionally he may show off but not to the extent of the new Holmes, in the new series Sherlock berates people and infers they’re stupid for not seeing what he sees, he brags about his abilities and intelligence. The books and older shows had Holmes simply explaining his process, he doesn’t condescend or patronise he simply shows them how in the hope they will learn.

Other character changes came in Watson. The new look and feel of the character was a welcome change truly marking him as new, more than his source material, along with showing Martin Freeman as a great actor.  The addition of therapy at the beginning I thought was an excellent inclusion truly representing the problems faced by modern soldiers and how the issues he faces are dealt with by the contemporary world. It was not all roses for Watson though; an important part of his character was a gambling addiction and the constant reference that Holmes looks after his money. The loss of this character flaw changed the dynamic of the relationship as while Watson emotionally and morally controlled Holmes from time to time, Holmes financially controlled Watson.

The final big character change was in Moriarty, no longer a professor and now a lot younger. Overall I liked the change, Moriarty only appears once or twice in the books but is inferred to be behind many more. They held this attribute in the show, keeping him in the shadows communicating through proxies and not letting Holmes find him until he wants. Although I did think that perhaps he was a bit young to be so powerful and that he could have done with being a little older. Despite the age he was fun as a villain and very intimidating when necessary, he often reminded me of the Joker, especially Mark Hamills rendition of that influential character.

A further, better, change, was the change in the investigative process specifically the use of mobile phones. This was an excellent way to see how Sherlock’s mind works, to see the deductions flowing through him. The phone also showed us how he looks for information and searches for connections, a wonderful way to modernise the scenes of Holmes and Watson searching through the newspapers and libraries for information sometimes crucial to the case at hand. Using the changes in communication really helped the show distinguish itself from others as well as help create a much faster pace allowing Holmes to move faster through a case.

Generally the show is faithful in style but not in character. The changes are explicable, mostly, and generally welcomed. It is however the characters that made the success of the stories not the style and the characters did not always match up right.

So a decent adaptation and a good modernisation, but is it entertaining?

Well, yes, there isn’t much more to say. It is funny, thrilling and has interesting well written stories. The characters as fun and easy to love, in general the high quality of the show demonstrates how far Gatiss and Moffat pushed the boat out to create an enjoyable ride for the audience.

Finally the stay ability, will it continue well?

Now this is where things get confusing, as this was originally meant for pre-series 2. At the time I felt it would do well if the character moved with the story and change the people involved. As well as thinking that due to the sheer vastness of the source material the show will never run out of original stories. I also felt that it could end up similar to the show “Lie to me” once Moriarty dies. In that the show will trundle along without direction. The second series showed some of these beliefs to be correct, the stories were original and the characters moved along nicely with the plot developments. Then Moriarty died, as a veteran Holmes fan I knew Sherlock hadn’t died, and I have yet to figure out what we all missed, but now I worry about the third series and so we will all have to wait for a while to find out these things, and see exactly how the writers deal with the loss of the arch villain.

Really though I like this show, it is an excellent example of how to make a good series, and many other television programmes could learn from it, especially over in the states. I hope it continues well and as a hard core fan I was impressed I look forward to sampling more.

Like Alien, without anything decent......

     Well it has been a while since I last wrote on here, sorry about that I’ve been quite busy of late travelling around (search for “A colonialist abroad” if you would like to read those adventures) and busy at work and unfortunately this has left me little time to write, but I am back now and hope to get some more posts out more frequently.

     Let’s get started shall we.

     We begin with the 2011 sci-fi horror film “Apollo 18”. I am going to start as I mean to go on, this film was bad, I mean seriously bad. I would like to leave it at that and relive it no longer but my integrity, self-esteem and the love of my friends means I must continue.

     Now I really didn’t like this because I found it initially pretentious, claiming the film is made up of real footage painstakingly re-constructed by some people living in dark cellars (no doubt terrified the CIA, FBI, MI6, MI5, NSA, KGB and Fed ex are all looking for them). The problem with claiming real footage; is that the film creates the expectation that what we will see is going to be as realistic and down to earth as possible something rarely achieve - especially in the horror genre. Obviously this is because the genre itself tends to move towards more fictional element such as supernatural killers etc. Even with that fact in mind when watching a science fiction film you do not want to be told that what you are about to see is real, it detracts from the experience as that thought sticks in the mind of the viewer and everything that happens that could not possibly real (and there is a lot in this movie) becomes a negative experience with the audience shouting at the screen in frustration at the lies the film has told them. This is the first minutes of the movie, remember. Even worse than the pretentions of “realism” the entire film seems to borrow heavily from the film “The fourth kind” the god awful Mila Jovovich movie mentioned in a previous post, this is something I did not take kindly to.

     Now for some juicy details about the films problems. Initially the plot is ridiculous, I can suspend my disbelief enough to believe there are rock like crab aliens on the moon, fine however why did this creature not attack the previous 17 missions to the moon? Other questions raised include why on earth (or the moon ha ha) was there only one Russian cosmonaut? That is not possible, there would have to be at least two if one had gotten injured or sick or needed the loo while an important call had to be made.

     More problems came in the simple way the horror was created. There was little suspense, no tension and absolutely no subtlety. The three most important aspects of the horror genre were completely avoided, without those key aspects all you get, as I have said, is pretentious thriller, and calling it a thriller is generous. Instead of the three keys, what I call the three undead musketeers of horror (snigger) you had an overt film so excited to show what was happening on screen that it actually circled it like they do to number plates in police shows, swiftly followed by zoom in on the little movement. Pieces that if left untouched in a still shot of the absolute quiet of the lunar background would become terrifying. Small movements would seem like large tectonic shifts by comparison and create an actual atmosphere rather than a show and tell exhibition.

     Beyond the sheer lack of knowledge displayed in creating a horror picture, the film lacked any creative talent in creating characters. There were three men on the moon and one in the station orbiting the moon; all four were non-entities, simple, dull and uncreatively written. They come across as people who are just there; they’re in no way relatable not really people just a bunch of guys with no real motivation. Maybe it is a case that astronauts are not really easy to relate to for a layman and those astronauts and other space farers will be able to understand their decisions, actions and motives. But that does not excuse the film, the writers should have tried to make their protagonists as close to the average Joe Bloggs in the street as possible, this way the fate of the men becomes tragic. Instead their deaths and falls from grace became routine, boring.

     These problems while detracting from the film are not its largest. The problem that irritates and angers me most is that this film had real potential. The premise and setting were as fresh; the ideas behind the men involved weren’t terrible just poorly played with. The strings were attached here they just weren’t tight enough; too much was left flapping in the wind. In truth this film was a disappointment for me, I had anticipated its arrival and instead was met with disappointment at every hurdle; initially delayed in the UK and finally met by a film that barely justified the £5 fee.

 Now these things are all easily explicable, the production of this was plagued with problems, directorial changes being the worst and most apparent. Along with actors pulling out and putting backing in, all of this delayed production. I would say that the delays made the crew lose momentum, get bored as such creating a boring experience. Which is the real issue I took, I was bored, and I had seen it all before and was not impressed.

     Really all I can say was that it was boring; the pacing was off by so much that it was hard to maintain interest being fast where it should be slow and slow where it should be fast. There was no build, things happened but they felt like simple things, not events in a seamless flow. The film never had any gravity (LOL) and just passed by like a guy in a passing car. (HHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO).