Friday, September 7, 2012

Media: The Incarnations Of Sherlock Holmes

Finally, Sherlock Holmes is getting straight. His companion, Dr. Watson, is a woman now - at least in a forthcoming TV series. The U.S. channel CBS announced the premiere of "Elementary", featuring Sherlock Holmes, for Thursday, September 27 (cbs.com). You can see a lot of ads for the show in the streets of Manhattan.

The fictional character Sherlock Holmes, invented by the British author Sir Conan Doyle around 1880, has had many incarnations in books, movies, radio plays, board & video games, comic strips, stage plays and TV series (wikipedia). I have been fascinated by the idea of Sherlock Holmes for decades. The detective stands for rational thinking and the human intellect. Holmes doesn´t depend on fists & guns, he prefers to work with his brain. Holmes solves the criminal puzzles by precisely analyzing the evidence and draws his conclusions by logical reasoning. I guess we all could learn a lot from him and use this smart behavior in most situations of our life.

I like the recent British series "Sherlock" which transported Holmes & Watson into the present. The show is smart, cool and hilarious and has a brilliant cinematography. The forthcoming CBS series also plays in the present and transforms the characters to New York, which gives the story a new angle.

I appreciate very much that the makers of "Elementary" choose Lucy Liu for the role of Dr. Watson (imdb). I have been admiring this fine actress a long time because she´s very cool, smart and sexy.

The choice of a woman who is the daughter of Chinese immigrants seems to me as a reference to the rising importance of China. Holmes is not just getting straight, he is getting multicultural too, in German we use for that the term "multikulti".

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