A worthy new Sherlock Holmes

I really thought I would hate it, a modernized version of Sherlock Holmes. When I was a kid, I loved the old movies with Basil Rathbone in the title role, shown on late-night TV in the US. Later, I fell totally in love with the late Jeremy Brett (shown above) in the extensive series produced beginning in the 1980s by Granada TV and shown on PBS in the US. We have been watching them in England, as they are replayed frequently on ITV.


Now there is a new Sherlock, played by a young actor--much younger than Brett was when he originated his cerebral, brooding, eccentric version of Holmes--named Benedict Cumberbatch. OK, the actor's name is a bit daunting. But the actor, I am amazed to find myself saying, was quite good and, while maintaining the distance from the hoi polloi required by Conan Doyle's character, was also accessible without being either folksy or rad. Indeed, as a much younger Holmes than the Brett or Rathbone versions, he was unusually excellent. Take a look at him, and his Dr. Watson played by Martin Freeman, here.

The producers made three episodes, although who knows if it will become truly episodic. But at least for the next two Sunday evenings, I can round out the weekend by watching a new and astonishingly acceptable version of one of my favorite fictional character's exploits. True, the hansom cabs have been replaced by London taxis (much better, at least, than the motley collection of taxis one would get in New York). But there's still a Lestrade who is no smarter than he needs to be to retain his position with Scotland Yard.

Now, mind, I'm not saying anything against Scotland Yard; I'm just remarking on the view Conan Doyle took of official detection and wrote into the character of Lestrade. In short, Conan Doyle would not have written Law & Order, in which detectives are given a great deal of credit for intellect, nor certainly Wycliffe, a British series about an intelligent, compassionate chief detective inspector in Cornwall.

The building fronts used for the Baker Street lodgings are the same ones used in the Brett series, although now the very modern building across the side street appears. Sherlock still has certain addiction problems, portrayed as solved and in the past for this series, and he still plays the violin to help himself relax and think. Watson is perhaps a bit more active and less useless than in either the Brett series of the Rathbone series, but the portrayal wasn't annoying. Sherlock is still, without doubt, the brains of the outfit, and Watson the man of action, mustered out after an injury from service as a doctor in Afghanistan. Indeed, it is refreshing to see Watson as more than a lovable buffoon.

Apparently, I am not alone in my admiration for this updated version of a classic, something so few do well at all, never mind this well. See other reviews here and here.

Cumberbatch was involved in at least two other period movies, Amazing Grace (in which he played William Pitt, friend of William Wilberforce who virtually single-handedly ended slavery in Great Britain) and Darwin. Here, you can hear him speak about Creation, the movie about Charles Darwin, in which Cumberbatch played Joseph Hooker, one of Darwin's scientific supporters. Cumberbatch also played Stephen Hawking, a man of the ages, but also a thoroughly modern one, and one of supreme intellect.

Need one say it? In addition, Cumberbatch is easy on the eyes, if not as classically handsome as Jeremy Brett.