Shit. Sherlock. No!

The Delightful LA Actress emailed to say that all the copy written so far for her website was right on the money and the remaining material we requested would be dispatched shortly. Which was good. If I can get the rest of the coy that needs to be written, written over the weekend everything should be on schedule.

Out last night meeting up with colleagues. Pubs and bars are too damn noisy and restaurants generally insist that you pay up and bugger off once everyone has finished eating, so, for what is turning into a regular get together, hotel bars have become the most viable option. They may have sniffy waiters and outrageous prices but you can hear yourself think and are always great for people watching.

The location this time was across from The British Library near Kings Cross, which meant the clientele was... interesting. It was only when I was heading back home that I had the opportunity to read the paper, whereupon I came across:

Jonathan Pryce is to make his return to British TV, playing Sherlock Holmes in a new two-part adaptation for BBC1. The actor, 59, whose last lead role on UK television – blah, blah, okay, lets skip to the end – It is part of a bid by the BBC to create more flagship “family viewing.”

Sherlock Holmes. Again?

A writer friend in LA once told me that to be a successful writer, read Conan Doyle’s canon of Sherlock Holmes stories. Think he’s blowing me off? Here’s his reason why:

The Sherlock Holmes stories are founded on the concept of deductive logic. That you don’t just look but you see, you perceive. What do I see? What do I know? What does something tell me? The way someone dresses. The way someone speaks. Their body language. The angle of their body when they speak. This can provide for you massive amounts of knowledge and information. The more information you have, the smarter you are, the more you control your life.

I started with A Scandal in Bohemia and gradually understood what he meant.

On film, Sherlock Holmes for me was always Basil Rathbone, with Nigel Bruce as the faithful Dr John Watson, even though the films typically strayed far from the source material, which in some instances were so slight that there was little to dramatise. On television, Jeremy Brett probably came closest to the definitive Holmes in four series made by Granada TV from 1985 to 1994.

Which makes me think, why remake them? What can a new adaptation provide other than a different actor under the deerstalker?

At the same time ITV was transmitting Jeremy Brett’s Holmes, the BBC was showing a series of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple dramas starring Joan Hickson. After appearing on stage in Appointment With Death in 1946, Christie wrote to Hickson saying, "I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple."

In the twelve murder mysteries, Hickson created perhaps the definitive screen version of Agatha Christie’s amateur sleath. Which meant that when ITV screened their Marple series in recent years, Geraldine McEwan played the character as a mischievous pixie, while the stories, co-produced by Granada and WGBH Boston, were spiced up with sex and overpopulated with an all-star cast with turned it into overblown pantomime.

Both Holmes and Marple are safe options that fit perfectly into the English tradition of murder mystery. Having been done, wouldn’t it be better for the BBC to take a chance and opt for original drama instead?