Spero Consulting

So, we’ve seen the pre­views for the new “Sher­lock Holmes” movie. (Note that we are not using the quo­ta­tion marks in the pre­vi­ous sen­tence just to denote a movie title. No, we’re using them dou­bly in an ironic way, too, as “scare quotes.”)

For many years, we have thor­oughly enjoyed read­ing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short sto­ries and nov­els (novel­las, what­ever) regard­ing the remark­able detec­tive, his pow­ers of infer­ence and deduc­tion, and his faith­ful and obser­vant side­kick, Dr. Wat­son. (Remem­ber, it is the doc­tor who relays the occur­rences, events, and facts of the cases.)

We also enjoyed var­i­ous movies and shows fea­tur­ing the detec­tive, par­tic­u­lar the PBS series star­ring the late, great Jeremy Brett. That series was extremely – though not com­pletely – loyal to the orig­i­nal sto­ries. That fidelity, along with the excel­lent cast, made many of those episodes some of the best in the his­tory of television.

Sher­lock Who?

Based upon the pre­views that we’ve seen it seems that other than (1) the names of the two main char­ac­ters, (2) the late Vic­to­rian time period, and (3) the Lon­don loca­tion, there is lit­tle in the movie that was in Conan Doyle’s stories.

• Holmes hand­cuffed naked to a bed? No, we don’t remem­ber that.
• Holmes in a ver­sion of late 19^th cen­tury fight club? No, we don’t remem­ber that, either.
• How about Wat­son punch­ing Holmes in the nose while they sit in a coach because Holmes insults him? No, maybe its our bad mem­ory, but we don’t remem­ber that, either.

Per­haps the movie’s director(s) and producer(s) rewrote the sto­ries because they believe that they are far more clever and enter­tain­ing than Conan Doyle.

If that’s the case, then based upon the evi­dence that we’ve seen, their the­ory doesn’t fit the facts. That bad taste isn’t crim­i­nal, but it is egregious.

P.S. We won­der if the sequel will be named Sher­lock and Hooch or maybe Holmes and Scooby Doo Inves­ti­gate the Haunted House?