alexxphoenix42:

I recently went back and watched the 2009 Guy Ritchie
Sherlock Holmes movie again. Pairing that with “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”
by Billy Wilder released in 1970, I can REALLY see the modern influences that
brought the BBC Sherlock series about.

Moftiss themselves have said TPLOSH was a big impetus behind
their modern reboot series. Wilder’s movie has a comedic silliness too it, but
a deep sadness under it as well. Sherlock is coded queer and deeply in love with
Watson, who seems purposefully oblivious. The film has to keep up a tap dance
of laughs to stay above the tears.

There are whole scenes that are lifted into BBC Sherlock.
After Holmes intimates that he and Watson are queer together to get out of fathering
a child for a pushy ballerina, Watson is furious. He blusters at Holmes that
they need to be more careful with their public image– much like John after
reading the Boffin and the Bachelor article in the paper.

Just as John keeps bugging Sherlock in the Moftiss version
about his sexual history (surely you must have had experiences) this Watson prods
at Holmes “I hope I don’t presume too much, but surely there were women?” To which Holmes archly replies, “Yes … you do presume too much.” (To quote sloppily.)

TPLOSH’s Sherlock is a tall and foppish dandy, doing drugs to keep his
feelings under control. The Watson is an angry, shouty little man who grows jealous
at the pretty femme fatale fawning over the detective – without even seeming to
know WHY he is jealous. He has an attachment to Holmes, but is so
deeply in denial it just comes out as smoke and bluster that doesn’t make a lot
sense. Sound familiar?

Funny moments are played with Holmes and Watson handing each other
things and saying “yes, dear” absent-mindedly, and it
seems sweet and domestic, but it’s just a BIG JOKE. Ultimately their attraction can never be named aloud, and they can never be together. Har, har har.

Fast forward a few decades to the Guy Ritchie’s movies with Jude Law and
Robert Downey Jr., and the WHOLE movie is about pining and pain. Watson is moving out of 221b to join
his new fiancé, Mary, with Holmes desperately trying to keep him in his life. As
Drinkingcocoa from Three Patch Podcast said once, the whole film is a “tone
poem” of loss and longing. RDJ’s Sherlock is wasting away like any jilted
regency heroine, while Watson, though fond of Holmes, seems utterly unconcerned
with the rift forming between them. It’s a sad imbalance, and the puppy dog
looks Holmes sends his friend’s way are heartbreaking.

The movie adds a modern sensibility to the Holmes universe with
a kind of steam-punk aesthetic that Ritchie enjoys. There’s quirky, fast camera
angles, snappy dialogue, anachronistic hats and coats that look more cool than
period, and a fast-paced comic-book violence set to rousing music that has
people swinging from bridges high in the air, and jumping away from deadly
explosions with only a scratch or two. It’s more flash and dash than substance, but modern audiences loved it and ate it up, clamoring for more.

Enter, BBC Sherlock just a year later, stage left. It boasts a tall, stylish
man, and his angry shouty side kick. It brings fantastic camera work and
cinematic tricks, fun banter, and gratuitous violence that plays out so
beautifully in a visual medium. Fight the bad guys, throw some slow mo punches,
and the hero saves the day – wheee! Like its predecessors, the show played with
fast-paced danger, queer coding and pining looks, fancy clothes and femme
fatales, but that didn’t seem to be ALL the show was about.

BBC Sherlock felt thinky, aware of its audience, and savvy
in a way that earlier shows had not. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock was a
complex character with needs and foibles, and finally the Watson didn’t feel like
just a side character or a bumbling helper. Martin Freeman’s John Watson lived
and breathed, had quirks and personality, and looked at his Sherlock with both
conflict and devotion in his eyes. Far from playing out just another cheap gay
joke, these men seemed to be developing something touching and real as a
heart-felt romance unspooled between them.  

Sadly, as the show continued, and the writers boxed
themselves into corners, they fell back on the
tried and true for what makes “fun television.”  They amped up the violence, and instead of
defeating the bad guys with cool moves, Sherlock’s friends lined up to slap, head butt and beat
him into the hospital. An homage to horror films thundered in while the nascent queer
romance between the leads shrank back to “cheap gay jokes.” Sherlock devolved into some kind of martyr, while the complex
character of John Watson withered into an angry, shouty puppet with no motivation or explanation for his actions.

It’s sad, very sad to me that Moffat and Gatiss looked to have
learned and improved over what had come before in the Holmes and Watson
universe only to change course midstream. In some bid for bigger and better,
they tossed their characters and plot onto a raging bonfire, ultimately arriving
at something flashy and thrilling, but empty and meaningless for their last season. Pass me
the Kleenex. I’m still not over series 4.