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{"id":18626,"date":"2017-01-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=349"},"modified":"2017-01-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T00:00:00","slug":"sherlocks-soap-operization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/01\/sherlocks-soap-operization\/","title":{"rendered":"Sherlock’s Soap-Operization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

N<\/span>icholas Barber gets Sherlock<\/a> just right. Benedict Cumberbatch has the intensity to kill the title role, and, puppyish though he is, Martin Freeman\u2019s Dr. Watson is a credible sidekick. The production is slick, the characters compelling, the rapport sharp and often witty. It\u2019s hugely entertaining.<\/p>\n

Then they go and turn it into a soap opera. <\/p>\n

Barber: \u201cThere were an exciting few minutes during this week\u2019s episode of the BBC<\/small>\u2019s \u2018Sherlock\u2019 when it looked as if Sherlock Holmes was getting on with the job of being a detective. A client had come to 221B Baker Street with a mystery to be solved; Sherlock had deduced \u2013 well, guessed \u2013 that an entrepreneur named Culverton Smith (Toby Jones) was a serial killer; and he had devised an enjoyably ridiculous scheme to prove his suspicions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas: \u201cthe writers performed one of their trademark rug-pulls. In the end, we learnt that Holmes\u2019s main motivation for taking on the case was to shake Dr Watson (Martin Freeman) out of his depression. Then we learnt that it was Holmes\u2019s long-lost sister (Sian Brooke) who had put him on the trail of Culverton Smith to begin with. The upshot was that the serial killing was more or less forgotten. Ultimately, the episode wasn\u2019t about anything except Holmes and his closest friends and relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plotting, already Swiss-cheesy with holes, suffers. The episodes in the fourth season seem interminable. They can\u2019t land these things because catching the criminal isn\u2019t what the story is about. Embedded in a family drama, the crime story doesn\u2019t give shape to the episodes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Sherlock. Adventure stories are getting smaller and cozier, soap operas dressed up with Daleks and Q and Treadstone: \u201cwhen the Bourne franchise returned last year with \u2018Jason Bourne,\u2019 its amnesiac hero discovered that he wasn\u2019t just a soldier who had enrolled in the CIA\u2019s shadowy Operation Treadstone: he was the son of the man who had created Treadstone in the first place. Again and again, sprawling conflicts are being reduced to family feuds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barber finds the trend a disquieting signal of the trajectory of our culture: \u201cThe new spate of universe-shrinking, of plots driven by personal animus, could well be a sign of how narcissistic our culture has become, and how desperate film and television studios are to please fans who are obsessed by their favourite characters. But it\u2019s also a symptom of globalisation: now that studios are so reliant on overseas sales, they don\u2019t want to risk offending foreign markets. It\u2019s safer to be personal than political.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And it diminishes the characters and their stories: \u201cone measure of heroism is to put your life on the line for a cause which doesn\u2019t affect you personally. Fighting for or against your own family is all very well\u2014but I\u2019d expect better of Sherlock Holmes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"