Sherlock (TV series)

Sherlock is a crime drama television series based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories. Created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor John Watson.

Sherlock is an international co-production of the British network BBC and the American station WGBH Boston for its Masterpiece anthology series on PBS, along with Hartswood Films, with Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, Sue Vertue and Rebecca Eaton as executive producers. 

Rebecca Eaton, Steven Moffat and Sue Vertue

The series is primarily filmed in Cardiff, Wales, with North Gower Street in London used for exterior shots of Holmes and Watson's 221B Baker Street residence. Sherlock has received critical acclaim, with many reviews praising the quality of the writing, performances, and direction. The third series has become the UK's most watched drama series since 2001. Sherlock has been sold to 180 territories. All the series have been released on DVD and Blu-ray, alongside tie-in editions of selected original Conan Doyle stories and original soundtrack composed by David Arnold and Michael Price. In January 2014, the show launched its official mobile app called Sherlock: The Network. Sherlock depicts "consulting detective" Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) solving various mysteries in modern-day London. Moffat and Vertue started considering about the possibility of casting Cumberbatch as Sherlock after watching his performance in the 2007 movie Atonement (go watch it, by the way. Great movie). The actor was cast after reading the script for the creative team. "Cumberbatch", says The Guardian, "has a reputation for playing odd, brilliant men very well, and his Holmes is cold, techie, slightly Aspergerish". Cumberbatch said, "There's a great charge you get from playing him, because of the volume of words in your head and the speed of thought—you really have to make your connections incredibly fast. He is one step ahead of the audience and of anyone around him with normal intellect. They can't quite fathom where his leaps are taking him.” Piers Wenger, head of drama at BBC Cymru Wales, described the series' rendering of Sherlock as "a dynamic superhero in a modern world, an arrogant, genius sleuth driven by a desire to prove himself cleverer than the perpetrator and the police—everyone in fact". The way the writers present this “modern Sherlock” to the audience is innovative and extremely interesting and also kind of funny to see how Sherlock would be like if he lived in the 2000s; in the series there’s several changes from the original version of Sherlock, such as Holmes replacing the pipe with multiple nicotine patches. The writers believed that Sherlock should not talk like "a completely modern person", says Moffat, but at the same time they didn't want him to "sound like he's giving a lecture". Moffat turned the character "more Victorian" in the second series, putting Cumberbatch's "beautiful voice" to a better use in order to make it sound like "he's giving a lecture".In an interview with “The Observer”, co-creator Mark Gatiss says it was way harder finding the right actor to play John Watson than they had for finding the perfect Sherlock. Sue Vertue said, "Benedict was the only person we actually saw for Sherlock... Once Benedict was there it was really just making sure we got the chemistry for John—and I think you get it as soon as they come into the room, you can see that they work together". Several actors auditioned for the part of Watson, and Martin Freeman eventually took the role. The theme of friendship appealed to both Gatiss and Moffat. Gatiss asserted the importance of achieving the correct tone for the character. "Watson is not an idiot, although it's true that Conan Doyle always took the piss out of him," said Gatiss. "But only an idiot would surround himself with idiots." Moffat said that Freeman is "the sort of opposite of Benedict in everything except the amount of talent... Martin finds a sort of poetry in the ordinary man. I love the fastidious realism of everything he does." Freeman describes his character as a "moral compass" for Sherlock, who does not always consider the morality and ethics of his actions.The writers say that they did not want to force modernity onto the story. There were some creative challenges, such as the decision to include the sign "221B" on Holmes' front door.

Gatiss and Moffat reflect that in the modern world the door would only display the number of the house, and there would be doorbells for each flat. The full house number is so iconic that they just could not change it. The writers also decided that the lead characters would address each other by their first names, rather than the traditional Holmes and Watson; this also reflects in the title of the series. The cast includes Una Stubbs (who has known Cumberbatch since he was four years old, as she had worked with his mother Wanda Ventham) as Mrs Hudson and co-creator Mark Gatiss as Mycroft Holmes. Amanda Abbington, Freeman's then-real life partner, plays Mary Morstan, Watson's girlfriend and eventual wife. In Series 3, Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton, Cumberbatch's actual parents, are introduced as Sherlock and Mycroft's parents; just like a family, we could say.
It's my favourite show ever, go watch it.

Cumberbatch, Ventham, Carlton and Gatiss

Article by Azzurra Furnari