Sherlock!

I didn't expect to like the new Sherlock when I saw it last year. But I did. I loved the witty dialogue and the relationship between Holmes and John Watson. I loved the fact that they were YOUNG--which was how Conan Doyle wrote them in the first place. I love the way that technology is embraced and the way that we see Sherlock's thought processes taking place like a computer program.

And last nights Baskerville episode, while a little silly in the end as mind altering gases always are, was really suspenseful and entertaining. I normally don't watch scary things late at night (I have vivid dreams even without the stimulation) but I couldn't turn this one off.

But it's also interesting to me to see how plots are recycled. Years ago a good friend of mine called Hal Barwood wrote and directed a movie about a mind-altering substance designed to make troops fearless and aggressive. Of course something goes wrong and the lab workers, sealed in an underground facility, try to kill each other. So last night's Holmes was a real case of deja vue.

What I like about this series is the clever banter and interaction between the characters that relieves the tension. I've always liked that sort of quipping relationship. Remember in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? That script was full of witty interchange even when the characters are fighting for their lives.  I suppose I enjoy it so much because it is what I strive for in my own work, especially in the Royal Spyness books. It's always a question of how do you make murder funny and yet keep the gravity of killing another human being? In the latest Naughty in Nice Georgie finds the next door neighbor floating in his pool with his head bashed in. She drags down her mother and friends to see. Her mother, never the sensitive type, takes one look and says, "What a disgusting looking man. He looks like a hippopotamus."

It's fun when characters say the sort of things we'd all like to say but don't!
So what did you think of Sherlock?