Holmesexual Subtext

The Mrs and I went to Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows a couple of days ago. It wasn't terrible but I don't think it had quite the same energy as the first film in this series. There was a long portion in the middle of the flick where I wanted to leave but I'm glad I hung in there because the ending was good. It's intriguing watching a new Sherlock Holmes movie at the same time as the BBC series Sherlock is running on the telly, because you can appreciate how certain ideas in the Zeitgeist have influenced two completely different teams of screenwriters on opposite sides of the Atlantic. In the original stories for example women have almost nothing to do but faint, however in both Guy Ritchie's films and the BBC series the women are somewhat more interesting and have a wee bit more to do. The drug angle is fascinating too, Robert Downey Jnr plays Holmes as a jittery coke fiend (perhaps channeling his own life in the 80's) whereas in the BBC series the dreaded drug of choice is tobacco (I'd love to see Michel Houellebecq's sarcastic commentary on that).
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Both teams of screenwriters are agreed that the gay subtext in the partnership between Holmes and Watson is ripe for humour. Purists should note that there has always been a bit of a gay subtext in the Sherlock Holmes stories. London in the 1890's was full of rent boys and readers of the Strand Magazine (where the Holmes stories first appeared) can't possibly have been the stuffy Victorian prudes we think of today. In the Guy Ritchie film Holmes drags up, tries to stop Watson's wedding, gets him in a clinch on the floor of a train and to cap it all his brother Mycroft is wonderfully played by an out and proud (in the film and real life) Stephen Fry. The BBC's treatment of the subtext is subtler and a bit funnier. Holmes is a pale, tall, handsome, aesthete and when Watson goes to live with him everyone assumes that they are a gay couple. Benedict Cumberbatch's aloof, diffident Holmes couldn't care less but Watson is continually trying to explain to people that they aren't a couple in the best Seinfeld tradition of "not that there's anything wrong with that." Martin Freeman is such a great comic actor that his discomfort cracks me up every time. 
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Interestingly I was at the gym yesterday and ABC1 were showing an old Sherlock Holmes episode from the late 1980's series. I only saw about twenty minutes of it but it looked like a good "closed room" mystery. A translator for the Foreign Office gets an important treaty stolen from his office and has a nervous breakdown as a result. I'm pretty sure the villain is the guy who played Blake from Blake's 7 but I missed the last two thirds of the episode and didn't see how he actually did it. Of course in the 1980's series there is no (or very little) gay subtext at all. 

Sherlock Holmes

The much hyped new BBC adaptation of Sherlock Holmes finally hit Channel 9 tonight. It's a modern spin on the classic story starring Benedict Cumberbatch (who played the pederast in Atonement) as Holmes and Martin Freeman (from The Office (and if the rumors are true the upcoming Hobbit)) playing Watson. Watson is an Afghan war veteran (like the original) who needs a place to crash in London and by dint of some strained plotting ends up in a flatshare with a chap called Sherlock Holmes who claims to be "the world's only consulting detective" - an amateur who helps the police (I guess he doesn't watch Monk). Anglophile cat owners of a certain age will love this show with its Byronic hero, its English accents, its occasional wit and its supposedly London locations. (Like Dr Who its all mostly filmed in Cardiff, and a Cardiff shout out can be the only explanation for one of Holmes's more tortured deductions early on). I enjoyed the genuine chemistry from the cast in episode 1 and the acting which was uniformly excellent. The script could have been tighter especially the third act which lifted a famous scene from The Princess Bride, as the key plot point. Inconceivable! as Wallace Shawn might have said.
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There were a few interesting action scenes and like Guy Ritchie's movie of last year we got to see how Holmes's mind worked, although I found many of his deductions pretty dodgy (this too, however, reminded me of the original stories).
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On the whole the new Sherlock Holmes isn't terrible which, paradoxically, is not a good thing. It will encourage the BBC to continue digging in the nostalgia mine and we can expect yet more verions of Robin Hood or Pride and Prejudice or another Dickens adaptation and lots more Dr Who. They will all star terribly nice young actors and be well made and done tastefully with just a smidgen of the gothic to thrill you as you watch in your favourite cardigan and slippers. Perfect fodder for everyone who wants to forget for an hour or two that death is coming and it'll be here soon and it will last forever and ever.