Sherlock Holmes

     I watch a lot of British television. It all started with Doctor Who, and spread from there. The most recent show I've been watching is Sherlock and it's a modern take on the myth of Sherlock Holmes. There are so many different variations of the story--movies dating back to the seventies, and probably before, television series, and even fan-fiction based on the original tales.
     There are two different shows running right now based on the myth: BBC's Sherlock and CBS's Elementary and I really enjoy them both. Elementary is one of the first non-British shows to portray Doctor Watson as an actual partner in Holmes's investigations (at least, according to an article I read somewhere). The combination of Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller is an antagonistic relationship, but the male-female interaction has a different tenor than the male-male relationship.
     When Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman come to the screen the relationship is much different; they maintain the antagonizing interplay, but also have a difficult sort of friendship to describe. They don't seem to interact except when on a case, yet they know an uncanny amount about each other's habits and likes or dislikes. I've only gotten through the first two episodes, but when there are fewer episodes than there are seasons of other shows, two is numerically a lot. My sister and several of my friends are completely infatuated with both the men on the show and the show itself; I can see the draw, but it isn't going to be my life's blood, watching a show that doesn't have another season until next year.
     What I really want to do about this Sherlock Holmes obsession everyone seems to have is to read the books. There are plenty of them to keep us all entertained until the newest season of Sherlock comes on, so who is going to? Every comparison I've heard places these two new adaptations high on the list of "best" but we won't know until we've all consumed the entire canon.
Congratulations Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; you've managed to keep us all entertained for centuries after your death. I wonder what he'd think...

Just a thought...
Stephie