Do We Really Need Another Sherlock?

My affection for the thespian work of Sir Ian McKellen is well-documented. As is my affection for Sherlock Holmes. So you can just imagine how this makes me feel.

“The Fifth Estate” helmer Bill Condon is reuniting with Brit thesp Ian McKellen for a feature adaptation of “A Slight Trick of the Mind,” based on the tome by Mitch Cullin.

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With his legendary mental powers on the wane and minus his sidekick Watson, Holmes becomes haunted by an unsolved case from 50 years ago where he remembers only fragments: a confrontation with an angry husband and a secret bond with his beautiful but unstable wife.

Sherlock seems to be all the rage of late, and I find myself vacillating wildly between geekin’ happily out over his seeming omnipresence and grumbling in irritation that not every interpretation is to my liking. Still, in this case, the answer to my titular question is a resounding yes.

I know nothing about Cullin’s literary effort (other than the tidbit that his Holmes is 93), but the idea of an older, retired and Watson-less Holmes has long intrigued me (as it did Doyle himself, apparently). And the idea of an older, retired and Watson-less Holmes played by Ian McKellen? I’m in. (I’m also amused, since impending director Bill Condon’s current film — The Fifth Estate — stars Benedict Cumberbatch, easily most famous for playing…right. You got it.)

Credit for that fantastic image of the Sherlock statue is due to The Awl.