“So I’m basically filling in for your skull?” “Relax, you’re doing fine…”

Sherlock was brilliant last Sunday.  I’ve been reading and re-reading Conan Doyle’s stories since I was 12, (it was one of the few things that eventually did manage to plug the gap when Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989).  I’ve seen a lot of the TV and film adaptations since then – predictably I love the Jeremy Brett series.  Some I’ve watched with enjoyment, some… erm… not.

For example, the BBC filmed a new version of the Hound of the Baskervilles in 2002.  I was delighted, sat down to watch it on Christmas day…  and then spent the rest of the film wincing.  Holmes was cast appallingly.  The plot was radically altered, although still had the same basics as the novel.  The heart did not seem to be in the right place.

Sherlock, though, was incredibly good.  It was a really rather faithful take on A Study In Scarlet – although the title of the original came from a line said by Holmes, not sure what the base of A Study In Pink came from.  The colour of the tablets maybe?

Sure, there were flaws, I think – the motive of the murderer was very sketchy, and the name of his sponsor pretty predictable.  But other than that, it was marvellous.  The story was a good enough adaptation of the original, but with great little modern touches – Holmes would certainly have been au fait with the more cutting edge tech available, and the GPS, the text messages, the blogs… all beautiful touches.

The dialogue, as you’d expect from the pen of Steven Moffatt, was sparkling.  The characters (and acting) perfectly judged.  Benedict Cumberbatch makes a great Holmes, the right mixture of the cerebral and unpredictable genius.  Martin Freeman gets a proper, meaty character – unusual for Watson, it’s usually pushed towards the bumbling idiot level.  But this Watson is great, strong and intelligent in his own right.  He has an eye for the ladies too – witness his persistence in dropping hints to Mycroft’s assistant, even though she barely realises he’s there.

There’s a good atmosphere between them, especially when Watson is asked to choose a side by Mycroft (who is still a stranger to him then), and clearly is puzzled by his instinct to trust Holmes, despite just having been abandoned at a crime scene and made to limp home.

Lestrade is as desperate as is fitting, being both jealously hostile but pathetically needy towards Holmes.  Mrs Hudson is very right, too – already seemingly a natural part of the furniture at 221b Baker Street.  The Mycroft character is very interesting too – in the books, the brothers view each other in a vaguely amusing manner, occasionally hostile, but nothing to the degree of attempting to pinch each others’ new friends…

Altogether it’s one of the very best adaptations I’ve seen.  People will always return to the Brett versions, or the incomparable Basil Rathbone, but the key thing is that this is different, exciting and yet somehow the same, familiar thing.  Surely the hallmark of a great adaptation?

Despite the Torchwood connection in this, I still can’t bring myself to watch this one though:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sherlock-Holmes-DVD-Dominic-Keating/dp/B00373VA24/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1280401127&sr=8-11

It looks appalling…

The Smallest Time-Teamer?

Last weekend, I took Luke along to the Roman Bath house in St Mary Cray.  This one.

Spot the Luke...

It is not usually open to the public, but as part of the marvellous Festival of British Archaeology, it was open for the weekend.

Luke loves digging things.  And he loves (maybe strangely for a small person) Time Team.  If you know what’s good for you, don’t go mixing up your Tony Robinsons and your Mick Astons in front of Luke – he’ll correct you, and if you’re lucky, he’ll only do it with a withering glare…

I tried to get him to follow the boards round the side of the bath house first, so we could learn about the story of the site before we went and did some exploring.  But he wasn’t having any of that.  He’d seen the sandpit.

A brilliantly simple idea to keep the kids occupied, the organisers had borrowed some finds from the nearby Crofton Roman Villa (which is right by Orpington Station) and buried them in a large sandpit.  There were plenty of little spades and finds trays for them to carry what they found over to the table and identify them.  This is where Luke left several people speechless.

The item in question was a piece of black pottery.  Luke held it up to be identified:
EXPERT: Do you know what this is?

LUKE: Yes, it’s a bit of pot.

EXPERT: Very good.  Do you know what kind of pot?

LUKE: Um, I think it’s a cooking pot.

EXPERT: You’re right – that’s really good!  Any idea why it might be black?

LUKE: Because it’s been burnt on a fire, of course!

He then identified another object himself – before the experts could tell him – as being Tesserae.  They were a bit speechless – not only was he right, but that he’d used the roman term and had explained that they made mosaics with them… although the pronunciation of “mosaic” is still a bit elusive to him.

He then started leading his granddad on a Tony Robinson-style walkthrough of the bath house remains, explaining what the rooms were and what order they were in…  You ever get the feeling that fame awaits?

Absence makes the blog grow… emptier…?

Over the last few months, you will have noticed – if you have dropped by the blog – that I’ve not really been blogging.  Well, I haven’t at all really.  There has been stuff to say and things to tell about, but I’ve been a bit, well, busy with it all.  Let me fill you in a bit.

I mentioned a few months back, that I was working on a new podcast, with a marvellous group of people: The Ood Cast started its run of weekly releases in early April, and has been going ever since.  Only now, with Andy involved in a show and Chris steaming off to the Edinburgh Festival to perform in 2 shows have we run out of steam.

If you’ve not listened to The Ood Cast, please do, if you’re interested.  It’s a sort of weekly revue show about Doctor Who, where we not only discuss what happened in that week’s episode, but we have sketches and songs based on the episode we’d just seen.  You can find it at our lovely website here: http://theoodcast.com

I (and I think I speak for all of us) am incredibly proud of what we’ve done here – we were recording the episodes on Tuesday lunchtimes, having seen the episode on Saturday and written all the material in the 2 days in between.  Luke gained himself a little group of fans thanks to his occasional appearances on the show as “The Littlest Doctor”, sketches written by each of us have been performed and aired, and the production and edit of each episode have been meticulous and excellent in quality.

And no matter how good we thought the material was, to read and hear the feedback and reviews we’ve got over the course of four months is just astonishing.  It’s still strange if I listen to another podcast and hear someone discussing how good we are.

We put a lot of effort in, and it’s absolutely brilliant to see people’s reactions to it.  Being called the podcast equivalent of the Cambridge Footlights may be a little bit of a back-handed compliment, but we’ll gladly take it, none the less!

So that, and the fact that my job is a slightly stressful and scary place to be at the moment, and the excitement (and nerves) surrounding Luke starting school in September has meant that I backed off from the blog for a while.

But with the Ood Cast taking a summer break, it seems silly not to try and get back into it a bit.  So I’ll do my best!