Friday 10 January 2014

Not quite Kosher?

I'm not very good at watching t.v.  I tend to wander away in the middle of a program, bored & irritated.  American t.v is particularly irksome.  Inane.  Mind~numbing.  Australian t.v is just very bad.  As a generalisation.  There are always exceptions. Even as a child I watched t.v with only half my attention.  The other half was firmly riveted on my book of the moment.

So it is very rare for me to sit through even a half hour program for its entirety.  Anything longer & I am chaffing at the bit well before I actually vacate my seat.  If someone has had the audacity to turn a well loved book into a film, or worse a mini~series, I can be guaranteed to point out all it's inaccuracies for the duration of the show & in point of fact Caitlin banned me from attempting to watch Merlin with her. That is one very, very bad show & the BBC should certainly have known better!  It is also inaccurate historically & mythologically, which makes me wilder than wild.

However Cait persists in attempting to find things I will actually watch with her.  Game of Thrones ~ though I  persist in drawing parallels with the worst of the Middle Ages! And I do tend to get up & wander away before we are done. She considered the Borgias ~ but that is a really nasty family & I drew the line. Goodness only knows what the BBC has done with that!  There was certainly plenty of fodder in that particular family! Her latest offering is the new BBC Sherlock.  New is a relative term.  We are already in season 3 though I have only just arrived there.  Everything about this show should drive me to distraction.  It is a modernisation of a classic ~ moreover a classic I loved.    The episodes are a bone aching 1 1/2 hours long & you only get 3 episodes a season.

However, in the best BBC style, it is fun, quirky, witty & a jolly good romp all round.  In other words, I was able to watch back to back episodes without turning into a raving ADHD lunatic!  It is also very clever!  The modernisation is  clever.  Sherlock running round with nicorette patches & nicotine cravings when he gets bored amused me, as does his Aspergers.  I peg him as an aspie though he claims to be a high functioning sociopath [as opposed to a psychopath though Psychiatry tells me they are the same thing].   He & his brother have a highly dysfunctional & extremely competitive relationship while his parents are mind~bogglingly ordinary.  The irony does not escape me.

Watson is, naturally, a blogger, gaining Holmes wrath in the process &  fickle internet fame.  And someone on the writing team gets bloggers because Watson has a thing for his reader~counter!  And one of the funniest scenes on any show ever is Holmes in court telling the judge & the lawyers what they can & cannot do.  Absolutely hysterical & naturally lands him in the bog for contempt!  Just as obviously Sherlock is incapable of hiding his light under a bushel & as Watson eventually points out he is a know~it~all~Drama~Queen.  Funny ~ & true.

For LOTR/ Hobbit fans Benedict Cumberbatch [Holmes] played both Smaug & Sauron's voice while Martin Freeman [Watson] was Bilbo Baggins.  I did Cait's head in by commenting Freeman was small, small enough to be a hobbit ~ which of course, he was.

I wonder if this will bear repeated watchings, like To the Manor Born & The Good Life because Penelope Keith is hard to beat.

3 comments:

  1. Bob and I watched it up to the Dominatrix episode. Kosher, indeed! It is clever though.

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  2. 9 million of us watched it here in U.K....me too!! However at the moment we prefer "The Bridge 2"... a Scandinavian series with a female detective also with aspergers possibly based on Sherlock...fun!!

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  3. MamaO, that episode nearly lost me but it reverted to something more acceptable next one. Thank goodness!

    Gerry: I don't know The Bridge 2 ~ will get Cait to find it so I can have a look. Sounds interesting.

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