Saturday Holmes

[tealin]

After catching up with four hours of Holmes plays I'd missed on account of not having RealPlayer at work, there was only one possible subject for my sketchbook last night:




Yeah yeah, he looks like a cross between Jacques and Otto, and is veering too old, but it's a start! Yes? I do like my Watson, he looks more like how I picture him in the plays and text without quite so much of the stereotypical pudgy old man. Is the moustache canon? I don't remember a specific mention of it but it seems to be pretty universal.

Oh, and what would be complete without Mycroft? Tee-hee.

If you want to give yourself a treat (before Wednesday and Thursday, respectively) listen to The Final Problem and The Empty House. Yay character development! Sir Conan Doyle is so mean to Watson.

I have any number of rational excuses for not sketchbooking on Friday but none of them matter; suffice it to say discipline is severely lacking in the sketchbook camp this year. I will do a compensatory page today and then ... try ... again.

Comments

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

How many episodes of the Granada series have you seen? I had been a Holmes fan for nearly ten years before I saw them and had very clear ideas of what he should look like (Basil Rathbone). It took a few episodes but Brett grew on me.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I've seen three episodes, given me by an ardent Brett fan who was sure they would convert me -- BLUE, MUSG and... I forget the other one. I've never seen Basil Rathbone play Holmes, either, so that wasn't prejudicing my judgment -- in fact my Sherlockian mania is almost entirely book-based.

Anyway, I can get past Brett's looks. What I can't get past is the way he portrays Holmes. The canonical Holmes most certainly has his flaws and eccentricities (including his drug-taking) but on the whole he is a man in command of himself, a strong character. Brett's Holmes strikes me as brittle and shrill by comparison -- a twitchy, neurotic character rather than a cool analytical mind. It grates on my nerves.

To use an odious comparison, Young Sherlock Holmes is a terrible movie in many ways, and Nicholas Rowe doesn't look or sound much at all like the canonical description of Holmes, but I still prefer YSH to anything I've seen of the Granada series. At least Rowe had Holmes's general attitude and bearing right, IMO...

[ubiquitouspitt.livejournal.com]

Oh, well shoot. There's nothing I can to sway you. I understand perfectly. In my case, I had grown so used to Holmes as a dry and cool character - this impression was reinforced by various cinematic performances. When I saw Brett, I was alarmed. I revised my books and remembered that Holmes did have an eccentric (and, imho, neurotic) side that had somehow been blotted out. I admire Brett for bringing a touch of the manic back Sherlock Holmes's character. However, I acknowledge that the electricity of his performances overwhelm, on occasion, and I can see how they would be particularly irksome to someone who cherishes the image of Holmes as being (for the most part) a dry calm personage.

I think you would like Basil Rathbone. Most of the SH productions he took part in are set in 1940's Britain. To my memory, his The Hound of the Baskervilles remained in the Victorian era.