Rather a Story

I spend most of my time in this LJ squeeing shamelessly about SPN. It may come as a surprise to some of you, therefore, to find out that I have been a drooling Sherlock Holmes fangirl since I was about seven years old.

I discovered the stories through my father and the TV series starring Jeremy Brett, who will forever be THE Holmes to me (the early series, anyway, I dunno what crack they were smoking toward the end). I own the Annotated Sherlock Holmes, and while I never joined the Baker Street Irregulars or anything, I do tend to follow anything Sherlock-related.

I'm also a bit of a purist. Okay, a lot of a purist. I don't watch a lot of the movies when they don't follow canon. I caved and watched the RDJ & Jude Law movie about a month ago, and thought it was cute, and close to the spirit of the stories, if not the essence. RDJ played a more physical and less cerebral Holmes, but there is evidence in canon for it, so I was okay with that.

I was therefore really, REALLY dubious about this new series everyone was getting all excited about. Sherlock Holmes reinvented for the modern day? Hah! Allow me to scoff at the presumption! Anyway, after much debate with myself, I finally decided to give it a try.

I am in love.

So much love, I can't even tell you. I love the actors' portrayals of Holmes and Watson. They're fun and eccentric and nuanced, and they capture the early dynamic between the two. The series is particularly good at giving Watson layers, a little something extra that's there between the lines of Conan Doyle's stories but never gets fleshed out because the stories are really about Holmes. Watson, after all, is NOT an idiot. He's a doctor, which means he's intelligent, and he's warm and usually insightful when it comes to people. I love that they're playing up his war career, the fact that it's as much a part of his personality as anything else, that he is, in fact, as much of an adrenaline junkie as Holmes is.

The show has been taking its time with the stories, too. The two episodes I watched were well over sixty minutes each (I didn't time them precisely), and took the time to tell the stories properly. There were nods and winks and elbow nudges to the canon freaks like me.

"Of course she was writing 'Rachel'!"

*hearts forever*

Oh, Lestrade, too clever by half this time!


In short, I am in luuuuuuuuurve.