This blog post is a catch-up on three murder mysteries which were on over Christmas and New Year.
First of all, the one we'd all been looking forward to the most...
Sherlock (**)
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| Victorian Sherlock - still considering that moustache... |
I can offer you two alternative ways of look at this - either it is an artistic failure, or some kind of folly.
Failure:
I was deeply dismayed when I realised they were making a Victorian Sherlock. The original Sherlock Series (1&2) were interesting, bright, and original precisely because they didn't have the Victorian feel of other versions of Conan Doyle's books. The modernity is the twist, so to remove that simply means it loses its twist! I am a huge fan of everything nineteenth century, especially nineteenth century London, so by all rights I should have been delighted, but I was already worried that the writers were scraping the barrel for ideas. Unfortunately, this was largely correct.
Oh dear. Any of you who are on Twitter will have realised that the vast majority of Sherlock fans were immensely disappointed by this vamped up, yet confused offering from Messrs. Gatiss and Moffat. I don't have a TV licence so patiently waited until I could legally download the episode, which meant an hour and a half of people live-tweeting their annoyance. One of my friends commented that the writers had lifted lines from the first episode of Sherlock into this one. I was a bit less assiduous when I was watching it but I had a similar sense that I'd already seen it.
There have been a number of more cogent reviews than I can offer, detailing where it is that Moffat is going wrong. It has been suggested that he is playing too much to his fan base. I suspect that the huge pressure on him to produce something brilliant every time is part of the issue (this applies as much to Doctor Who by the way). Perhaps he's exhausted. Perhaps he just needs a really good editor to tell him to work on his plots? Watching the previous series of Sherlock (3) I concluded that Stephen Moffat just needed a nice cup of tea, a chance to calm down, and maybe a tough editor. He could yet learn a great deal from the classic murder mystery writers such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham. Their work is dramatic but doesn't leave the viewer/reader bewildered and exhausted, trying to keep up. (And then there were none is a good case of the slow burn, especially the first episode. See below).
Folly:
The problem is that at least some of the hardcore fans did love it. I think it is fair to say that it only worked if taken as some sort of fantasy project. In other words, the New Year Special bore approximately the same relationship that nineteenth century follies do to real castles.As a child I was always incredibly disappointed when I was promised a castle (Blaise Castle for example, in Bristol) and then discovered that it was 'only a folly'. I always wanted to go to a 'real' castle. (I could have done with a Tardis, in retrospect). However, if you treat the folly for what it is, it is both an interesting piece of British history and quite a jolly place to visit. As an adult, I'm probably as interested in the strange Gothic fantasies of the nineteenth century as I am in the original medieval castles.
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| Blaise Castle. Picture from Wikipedia. |
As a folly, the Victorian Sherlock almost works. The viewer knows what 'real' Victorian Sherlock was like, and we can laugh at the little in-jokes, and enjoy the Gothic appeal of the New Year Special.
However, even taking this into account, it was hardly the best of episodes... We all hope it will make a little more sense at some point when the next series appears. I hope Stephen Moffat invests in a box of Yorkshire tea and a friendly, but tough, editor.
And then there were none (***)
This was a three-part series just after Christmas. The premise is simple and implied in the title. 10 strangers arrive on a small island, and one by one are killed off. I won't put any spoilers in this in case you haven't watched it, but it was superbly acted, very dramatic, and scared the living daylights out of me! If you like being scared I highly recommend it. As someone who has watched murder mysteries and read them from the age of 10, I am not normally this scared of a television programme, but this was both a true thriller and a true horror.
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| Arriving on Soldier Island - all looking smartly dressed and - importantly - still alive here! |
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| A great cast, including Charles Dance. |
My main concern (the reason why this has only got 3 stars in my rating) is that it was overly gory for my taste. Do viewers really need to see all the bodies and blood? I am worried that series like Game of Thrones (in which Charles Dance also appears) have rather dulled our senses and now we expect this kind of gore at all times. The storyline is quite sufficiently dramatic as it is without adding to the drama in this way.
I probably wasn't the only person to find this a bit much for my nerves. Many fans of ITV's versions of Miss Marple and Poirot would have found this very different, even difficult to watch. It is necessary to add the caveat that in Agatha Christie the darkest side of humans is ever present, and occasionally her books can be quite grim. However, to a large degree the presence of the detectives makes them much more 'cosy'. The lack of positive characters in this for me made it a much gloomier affair, but perhaps it struck the right tone for just after Christmas! Overall, very well done though, just don't blame me if you get nightmares.
Dickensian (****)
Unlike the other series in this post, I didn't even know this was going to be on television until the first episode had already aired, and I was initially very cynical about it, thinking that it wouldn't really work. I love Dickens. I read many of his novels as a teenager but in the last two years have decided to plough through the others, after reading Simon Callow's brilliant theatrical biography of him (which I highly recommend.) Since then I am excited by all things Dickens.
The series is in half-hour episodes, and is, as you'd expect, fairly light-hearted, although there are some serious undertones/themes throughout. The premise is that Bob Marley, Scrooge's partner from A Christmas Carol, has been murdered. The rest of the characters are all derived from either A Christmas Carol or other Dickens novels. This series captures the essence of the Victorian period much better than the Sherlock episode, and is very cleverly done indeed. It features some great performances, including Stephen Rea as the detective (who is also starring in the BBC version of Tolstoi's War and Peace), Omid Djalili and Anton Lesser, who makes a very good Fagin. Perfect winter time viewing. The soundtrack is rather a pastiche (think Hans Zimmer's Sherlock Holmes crossed with David Arnold's Sherlock, the soundtrack to Ripper Street, I'm sure there was some Inspector Montalbano chucked in), but otherwise I don't have a bad word to say about it! I'm not sure what someone who has never read Dickens would make of it, but I think it would still be very enjoyable if you didn't get the references. A bonkers mash-up!
