Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #5. Gary Lovisi
The two share an undeniable chemistry which, along with the superb scripts and high production values, ensured Sherlock’s massive success, this despite the fact that the series arrived on British screens with little or no fanfare and with only two of the three episodes really hitting the mark.
The first story, A Study in Pink, scripted by Moffat, is of course based quite closely upon Conan Doyle’s original novel, A Study in Scarlet. Watson arrives back in England after being wounded in Afghanistan (how far we’ve come in 120 years!), and after a chance meeting with old pal Stamford at the Criterion coffee bar, he’s introduced to Sherlock Holmes in the laboratory at St Bartholemew’s Hospital. They move into 221b Baker Street and are almost instantly drawn into a poisoning case by Inspector Lestrade (played by the George Clooney-esque Rupert Graves).
Episode Two, The Blind Banker, is less successful, regrettably. Steve Thompson’s script, which has Holmes and Watson investigating a series of assassinations in London’s financial district, has little to do with Conan Doyle, save that a plot element concerning coded graffiti suggests The Dancing Men. An original story is no bad thing, of course, but the plot could serve another series — say, Midsomer Murders or Inspector Lewis — just as well. The Blind Banker may be a perfectly adequate 90 minutes of television, but it isn’t quite Sherlock Holmes.
The final episode, Mark Gatiss’ The Great Game, not only incorporates elements of The Five Orange Pips, The Naval Treaty, and The Bruce-Partington Plans, it also owes a good deal to the 1939 film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. As in Rathbone’s second movie, Moriarty — whose existence is mentioned in A Study in Pink — sets a series of puzzles for Holmes to solve in order to prevent the detective from focusing on his true intent, a crime of international significance. This isn’t the first Rathbone reference in the series — episode one features an exchange of dialogue lifted directly from Universal’s Dressed to Kill. The Great Game ends with a confrontation between the two enemies, and a cliffhanger which, thanks to Sherlock’s huge ratings, will be resolved in the second series, once Steven Moffat has concluded his work on Doctor Who and Freeman has dealt with any scheduling conflicts regarding his starring role as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s forthcoming movie The Hobbit.
The modernisation of certain elements in Sherlock is well thought out — Watson keeps a blog rather than writes memoirs; the famous sequence where Holmes deduces the sad history of his friend’s brother by the examination of a pocket watch now revolves around a cell-phone, and the detective has been forced to abandon his famous smoking habit for nicotine patches — Holmes refers to their first case together as “a three-patch problem.” For some, myself included, it jars when the main characters address one another as “Sherlock” and “John,” but there is no escaping the fact that in our informal age that is precisely what they would do, and any attempt to have them do otherwise would come across as phoney. And while it was never even considered in the original tales, some fun is had at Watson’s expense as he must constantly convince people that he and Holmes are not romantically involved. “Don’t worry, there’s all sorts round here,” he’s assured by Mrs Hudson (Una Stubbs). “Mrs Turner next door’s got married ones.”
It has been hinted that the next series of three adventures will concern Irene Adler, The Hound of the Baskervilles and the encounter at Reichenbach Falls — all, of course, with a 21st-Century twist. “It allows you to see the original stories the way the original reader would have read them,” Moffat explains. “As exciting, cutting-edge, contemporary stories, as opposed to these relics that they’ve become.” If the second series matches or even surpasses the quality of the first, the present-day Sherlock definitely has a future.
SHERLOCK HOLMES MEETS DRACULA, by Robert Eighteen-Bisang
An early version of this paper was published in The Sherlock Holmes Journal 29:3 (2009) 94-98 under the title “Dracula by Arthur Conan Doyle.”
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People of all ages in every part of the world know that Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant, eccentric detective while Count Dracula is a vampire from Transylvania. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or H G Wells’s Martians, these characters have become parts of popular culture.
There is less awareness that their creators — Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) and Bram Stoker (1847-1912) — were friends who collaborated on a variety of projects. Both authors contributed a chapter to the episodic novel The Fate of Fenella, which was serialized in the magazine The Gentlewoman in 1891-1892.* In 1892, Doyle adapted his story “A Straggler of ’15” as a one-act play, which he submitted to the Lyceum. Stoker, who had managed the theatre since 1878, felt that this patriotic melodrama about an old soldier who had been decorated for heroism but fell on hard times when he returned to England was an ideal vehicle for his employer, Henry Irving. He advised the actor, “You must own it — at any price. It is made for you.” After minor changes to the opening act, it opened under the title A Story of Waterloo** at the Prince’s Theatre in Bristol. Many years later, Doyle told his friend how he had decided on his detective’s name. He recalled, “Finally in 1887 I wrote A Study in Scarlet, the first book which featured Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know where I got the name from. I was looking the other day at a piece of paper on which I had scribbled ‘Sherrington Holmes’ and ‘Sherrington Hope’ and all sorts of other combinations. Finally at the bottom of the paper I had written ‘Sherlock Holmes.’”
[*Doyle wrote chapter 4, “Between Two Fires,” while Stoker penned chapter 8, “Lord Castleton Explains.”]
[** Eventually shortened to Waterloo.]
Doyle’s enthusiastic opinion of his friend’s only masterpiece is evident in a letter dated 20 August 1897:
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My Dear Bram Stoker,
I am sure you will not think it impertinent of me if I write to tell you how much I enjoyed reading Dracula. I think it is the very best story of diablerie which I have read in many years. It is really wonderful how with so much exciting interest over so long a book there is never an anticlimax. It holds you from the very start and grows more engrossing until it is quite painfully vivid. The old professor is most excellent and so are the two girls. I congratulate you with all my heart for having written so fine a book.
With kindest remembrances to Mrs. Bram Stoker & yourself.
Yours very truly,
Conan Doyle*
[*Doyle’s letter to Stoker — which is in the custodianship of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin — is reprinted here through the courtesy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate. ]
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References to the novel can be found throughout Doyle’s work. Dracula’s estate in Purfleet is called “Carfax.” The use of this name in “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” (1911) may be a tribute to the novel. As Donald A. Redmond points out “That Doyle uses the name [‘Carfax’] in a case which hinges upon a coffin containing an un-dead body, as well as the withered corpse of Rose Spender, is an obvious reference back to the tale of the thirsty Count.” Many years later, Pierre Nordan’s biography of Doyle notes that his fantasy about Atlantis, The Maracot Deep (1929), ends when the monster is “…destroyed somewhat in the manner of the vampire in Dracula.”
“The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” (1924) has Holmes find references to “Vampires in Hungary” and “Vampires in Transylvania” in his index. After throwing down the book with a snarl of disappointment he exclaims:
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“Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their hearts? It’s pure lunacy.”
“But surely,” said I, “the vampire is not necessarily a dead man. A living person might have the habit. I have read, for example, of the old sucking the blood of the young in order to retain their youth.”
“You are right, Watson. It mentions the legend in one of these references. But are we to give serious attention to such things? This