On 28 Nov 2014, at 09:06, Richard Aiken wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2014 at 11:00 AM, Andrew Long <xxxxxx@mac.com> wrote:
> 2. Modern day Holmes - Jonny Lee Miller in 'Elementary' (I especially like the variants now available with Lucy Liu as Watson....)
>
> I like both Elementary and Sherlock, but their versions of Holmes are very different:
>
> Elementary takes the original stories as inspiration for villains (I *love* their versions of Irene Adler and Moriarty . . . and will mention no further details in order to avoid MASSIVE spoilers). But what I like best about it is the absolutely stellar job it does portraying Holmes as a real person. Miller's Holmes is an addictive personality (with all that implies) and exploring the continuing ramifications of this fact is a vital part of the show. Also, while this Holmes is ferociously contained and focused, he remains eminently aware of social conventions and emotional realities; he simply chooses to ignore these, most of the time.
>
> Sherlock - on the other hand - follows the spirit of the original stories much more closely, by portraying Holmes as an enigma, with only the occasional flash of what might be called "normal" humanity. Cumberbatch's Holmes is much closer to a classic sociopath, someone who - while incredibly brilliant in an intellectual sense - possesses very little in the way of emotional intelligence. I can't count the times that his Holmes has had to visible stop in his tracks and consciously figure out what social error he made and then logically conclude how best to fix it . . . or whether to simply ignore it and proceed onward.

ISTR a moment from the first season (probably from the first episode) where one of the police officers calls him a psychopath. Sherlock corrects them :- "get your terms right; high functioning sociopath".

What I find tells with me is that the BBC is trying to re-tell the clsssic stories in a modern environment, whereas ABC(?) is using the classic stories as a starting point for new ones - just off the top of my head I can think of two episodes that *started* with the solutions to "The problem of Thor Bridge" and "Silver Blaze" and went on from there to re-examine the underlying cases.

Watching the new season of Elementary you can see Miller's Holmes actively trying to connect more with Joan and the coparison with his relationship with Kitty. I didn't think I was going to enjoy it when it first came out, but I'm glad that I started watching it.

Regards, Andy

--
Andrew Long
Andrew dot Long at Mac dot com