{"id":5654,"date":"2014-01-27T21:10:24","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T02:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5654"},"modified":"2014-01-27T21:10:24","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T02:10:24","slug":"holmes-with-too-much-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5654","title":{"rendered":"Holmes with too much heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been watching the new series<\/strong> of BBC\u2019s Sherlock<\/i>, of course, and of course it\u2019s very good. If you\u2019re on Facebook, you\u2019ve probably seen, as I have, a number of positive reviews.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t mean to pan it here. I enjoy watching it. I think it\u2019s extremely clever and well done.<\/p>\n

But I have to say I think the series has lost its way.<\/p>\n

The first season was remarkable, in my view, for being an update and a reboot that managed to keep the spirit of Conan Doyle\u2019s characters and stories to an amazing degree.<\/p>\n

Last season, I think, was a little less so. And this season even less.<\/p>\n

The failure (it seems to me) is an overdose of something I ordinarily like \u2013 excellent characterization. Cumberbatch\u2019s Holmes and Freeman\u2019s Watson are wonderfully alive and interesting. But they’ve moved too much to center stage.<\/p>\n

Remember, these are supposed to be mysteries. This season\u2019s stories have been mostly about Holmes\u2019 and Watson\u2019s friendship. In Episode One, the great question was, Will Watson forgive Holmes for going off and letting him think he was dead?<\/i> In Episode Two, it was, How will Holmes manage to function as best man at Watson\u2019s wedding, considering his personality problems? <\/i>In each case, the mysteries were shoved off onto the periphery.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to complain \u2013 much. But it\u2019s important not to lose focus on your primary task, whatever you\u2019re doing. A Holmes story that’s more about relationships than mystery is not really a Holmes story.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been watching the new series of BBC\u2019s Sherlock, of course, and of course it\u2019s very good. If you\u2019re on Facebook, you\u2019ve probably seen, as I have, a number of positive reviews. And I don\u2019t mean to pan it here. I enjoy watching it. I think it\u2019s extremely clever and well done. But I have … Continue reading Holmes with too much heart<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}