The science of deduction - Thoughts on BBC series Sherlock
Once Arthur Conan Doyle had tried to murder his novels’ main character, the ultimate master of the science of deduction. But he failed. Readers saved him, and a legend started. The legend of Sherlock Holmes.
By now uncountable amount of stories, adaptations, retellings were created, not just books, but cartoons, movies and television series. People are calling him again and again to solve cases in that incredible, unexpected way as he always do. These things are able to keep him so alive and renew time to time.
And here are the questions… the always appearing puzzle boxes. Who is this man? Why is he SO poplular even after a whole century? Well…as Sherlock would say:
“this is a three patch problem…”
Sherlock Holmes is a detective (nowadays more likely consulting detective) who lives in London at 221/b Baker Street, has a flatmate, called Dr. John Watson who helps him investigating - and from the books point of view - he is the storyteller of all cases. Plays on a violin, smoke, take drugs, needs to get impressed by the case he wants to solve. These are the basic informations we got from Arthur Conan Doyle. We’ve got a bit mad and absolutely genius, but ready made character. The cases were new, however Holmes stucked in his own, well described personality. The early adaptations only changed the situations, the surrounding space around the characters, but the characters selves never were touched. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson become iconic images and time started to turn them into the ghosts of their characters. Stucked in the 19th century London, with the same tones and same moves.
After this “deadzone” (if I can name this decades with a title like this) everything turned upside-down. The 21th century shaked literature and the arts up with its whole flood of inventions - e-books, internet, blogs, virtual reality sites etc. Creativity and fictional characters are getting closer to the real world. Fiction and facts are collapsing. You could ask now, why this things important in our “little case”? Well, this is one of the most important clue in the case of Sherlock Holmes’s legend.
The mostly stone dead characters got a huge update. They got living, always forming and moving characteristics. They have become alive.
Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Sue Vertue rethought Doyle’s masterpiece and the main character had to face with his greatest challenge ever. Today’s world. The new BBC miniseries brings Sherlock into the modern London.
He has nicotine patches instead of the pipe, travels by cab, and really love texting. Oh, and the best of all, he’s got an own website, called The science of deduction. And the trick starts here. We not only get a well-made, three part storyline… we can touch the virtual image, we get an imaginary friend (maybe not a friend, but you know what I mean on this). And also there’s John Watson’s blog. Real people write stuff like blog… and talk about their feelings, opinion and stories. All of these hints, clues, keys, pieces of puzzle or as you like it turn the never changing images into breathing, flesh and blood modern age heroes.
