Dusting Things Off
Arachne Jericho on Jan 5th 2010
*looks left*
*looks right*
*starts blowing dust off things*
*coughs, goes and starts properly wet-dusting, then dry-dusting things*
I’ve decided to blog more about Sherlock Holmes. To help this along, I’ve thought about starting a read/watch/listen-along. I’m still making some decisions about that.
The biggest decision, which specific instances of media to cover, has been made. They will be:
- the original text (duh),
- the Granada TV series (Jeremy Brett),
- and Bert Coules’ BBC radio series.
I’m human and have limited time, so I’m not covering anything else. Also, I don’t have access to Russian Sherlock Holmes, which makes me sadface.
The other big decision is: what to include in this series? I’m still thinking about this. Not all of the Holmes canon stories, like most any canon out there, are fun to read. Or at least, not the same level of fun. There are vastly distinctly different levels of fun, in fact, although everyone disagrees on specific levels for individual stories.
For instance: do I want to cover A Study in Scarlet and the foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Mormonism chapter, thank goodness it’s only a chapter, but doubtless there was implied stuff in there as well that went over my head when I was younger and more innocent? There’s something to be said for not wearing rosy-colored lenses all the time. Doyle, like all human beings, had faults, and sometimes they showed up painfully.
On the other hand, do I want to enjoy myself through most of this? Especially since this’ll be, at best, mostly free work. I mean, I can snark with the best of them about the awfulness of most some of “The Lion’s Mane”, but that at least is fun to me.
I think my decision on that will mostly be based on whether Bert Coules’ BBC radio adaptation for a particular story/novelette are fun or not. I’ve never listened to his adaptation of A Study in Scarlet, but I bet it leaves out the foaming-at-the-mouth stuff and replaces it with more fun Holmes/Watson interactions.
In the meanwhile, I will fit what Sherlock Holmes posts I can at Tor.com, because it’s fun and I get paid for it. But obviously not all of the planned posts can make it in, Tor.com being focused on science fiction and fantasy (and other related topics, like fandom, which is mostly how I get Sherlock Holmes in).
Things to ponder.
By the way, on the New Movie: well, it was like the Star Trek reboot, really. The characters were a fun alternative interpretation. The plot… was basically like the red blobby stuff that deformed the space-time continuum by magic science in the New Trek Movie (only now do I remember it’s called “red matter”). Not that Doyle was a plotting genius all the time either, though.
Filed in Media
Hi, I found your website through a link about the new movie; someone noticed your amusing article about Shipping Wars. I’m still looking around here, and I wondered if you were ever going to continue your Retyping the Speckled Band series? You’d stopped in the middle, and I wanted to see what you would eventually say of the ending with the snake. (I am somewhat obsessed about SPEC.)
Speaking of the movie, I agree that the plot had absurdities, such as how on earth Irene suddenly traveled from sewers up to Tower Bridge, but I didn’t consider it more egregious than Doyle’s works such as the notorious SPEC and HOUN (Doyle never bothered to explain how Stapleton was going to claim the Baskerville inheritance after having lived under a false name). Doyle was more about telling a good yarn than about constructing a foolproof mystery.
As for your current project, it sounds ambitious for you to begin reading/watching/listening to Holmes stuff again. I don’t have any Granada videos, so I can’t really participate in that portion, but would be interested to hear your point of view.
I want to warn you about something, though. The anti-Mormon stuff in STUD is actually five chapters long, not one. You may be thinking of SIGN, in which the murderer gets only one chapter to flashback about his past. Nope, STUD abandons Holmes & Watson for five whole chapters. No wonder so few people adapt this novel in whole! :)
Hello Cress!
On the Speckled Band: it started when I was younger. Hopefully I know somewhat more now, so I might return to it; we’ll see.
Doyle definitely preferred spinning yarns than perfecting mystery puzzles/plot. In some stories I think he tried too hard at the latter, which doesn’t work out so well.
And five chapters of anti-Mormonism in Study? Ye gods. I’m going to have to double-check the Coules adaption to see how he handles that. It’s long enough that he may have felt he needed to include it, and that makes me *headdesk*. On the other hand, he has ejected entire scenes from stories before (generally for the better), and completely re-adapted others (also generally for the better), so I have high hopes.
Hey, I’m glad you’re looking back to this website again. I started following a while back and it’s just been on my Reader list. I’m looking forward to more of your posts. =)
Purple
Hi Purple,
Thank you. :) I hope my posts continue to be interesting. I have quite a lot of fun with Sherlock Holmes.
Thanks for the kind words; I’m delighted that you’ve enjoyed my work, though I hasten to point out that I was the head writer of a team of scribes on the BBC audio series: they’re not by any means all from my own keyboard.
If you do listen to A Study in Scarlet (which was one of mine) you’ll find quite a lot of time given to the Mormon backstory, though it’s handled differently to the way it’s done in the novel. I hope that you can find at least some fun in my approach.
Bert Coules
Wow, you got a reply from THE Bert Coules! I’m so impressed. His version of STUD actually cuts down the Mormon portion to a manageable size. It’s part of Jefferson Hope’s confession in jail, so it’s more like how SIGN handled Jonathan Small’s confession.
Bert Coules,
HI! Don’t mind if I totally fangirl out for a moment.
*fangirls out for a moment*
Good to know about the writing team. I shall have to examine credits more closely and apply said knowledge to future writings.
Cress,
Excellent to hear!
Arachne, you can find full credits for all the episodes on the Sherlock Holmes section of my website: http://www.bertcoules.co.uk/sh-home.htm. Just follow the links to “casts”.
Oh, and you might be interested to know that a new two-part show in the Further Adventures series will air at Easter and be released on CD at the same time.
Keep up the good Sherlockian work.
Bert Coules
Bert Coules,
Ah, very useful link. *bookmarked* Thank you!
And I’m quite happy to hear about a new story in the Further Adventures! Especially if it’s being released on CD that soon. We don’t seem to have access to the majority of BBC radio in America, so I’ll be patient for an Amazon.co.uk package to gradually float across the Atlantic. :)