Five Things Make a Post

[pedanther]

1. Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century is back in the rotation on Jaroo, so if defrosted Sherlock Holmes fighting futuristic crime with the assistance of Inspector Lestrade's great-...-granddaughter and a robot that thinks it's Watson sounds like something that you might find amusing (in any of several possible ways), here's your chance. Try to stick it out for at least the first three episodes, as they form a mini-plot-arc setting up the various bits of the series premise. (Also, the third episode is not half bad.) The first episode is only going to be up for a few more days, I think, but if you miss it I'll be happy to give you a brief synopsis of the key points so that you can carry on from episode two; this might in fact be preferable to actually watching the episode.


2. Australia's latest TV panel game is The Unbelievable Truth, based on the British radio panel game of the same name (which airs here on Radio National) in which contestants give lectures that consist almost entirely of lies, and the other contestants have to identify the implausible-but-true bits. Graeme Garden, co-creator of and regular contestant on the radio version, appeared in the second episode, and trounced everybody handily. I'm not sure so far that being on TV has added anything to the format, which after all is basically built around people talking, but allowing for it being early days yet it's not significantly worse either.


3. The same day I finished re-reading The Dragon Hoard, something happened to remind me of another of my favourite books since childhood, John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, so I'm re-reading that now. It's occurred to me that I've had one of Masefield's adventure stories for adults, Odtaa, lying around unread for a couple of years now, and I've been told that it and its sequel Sard Harker have connections to The Midnight Folk by way of shared characters and settings, so perhaps I'll read that next.


4. I mentioned in my last entry that I was unwell. I'm quite better now. I bring this up only because apparently nothing else more noteworthy has happened to me lately.


5. Random musical video link (via): Singer-songwriter duo Lou & Peter Berryman explain that since they've been touring across America, they've become conscious of the fact that all their sentimental songs are about their home state of Wisconsin. To redress the balance, they've written a sentimental song with spaces left blank to be filled in as appropriate.

Sometimes when the grass is blown by the breeze
There's a far-away look in the leaves of the trees
A memory returns, heart-breakingly clear
Of a place I call home, [your state's name here].

Comments

[seawasp]

Oh, I caught like three seconds of the Sherlock Holmes one when I was younger, but its schedule and mine never fit. How is it overall? And if you could summarize the first ep that would be nice.

[pedanther]

I don't know about overall; I missed it entirely the first time around, so I've only seen the first five episodes in the current rotation. It's a bit ropey, so far: very Saturday-morning-cartoon-ish, and the extent to which any given episode is a Sherlock Holmes story rather than a future-cop show with a guy named Holmes in it varies quite a bit.

I do like the third episode, though; it's got a reasonably Holmes-ish Holmes, allowing for the fact that he's investigating giant hound sightings at a tourist resort on the moon. There's a nice bit where the hound makes its first overt attack, and while everybody else is running around panicking because there's a giant hound pressing up against the atmosphere dome and howling dismally, Holmes's first reaction is "Given that the hound is outside the atmosphere dome, how is the howling audible?"

In the first episode, it is the Future. There is a criminal mastermind who looks exactly like Professor Moriarty. One woman, Inspector Beth Lestrade, believes he might actually be Moriarty, despite the minor detail that Moriarty's been dead for centuries. She decides that the world needs Sherlock Holmes back, and has him revived using a new experimental process. (Conveniently, Holmes's body is ready to hand in a Scotland Yard evidence locker, embalmed in honey. Nobody bothers to explain why.) There is some running around, culminating in a face-to-face confrontation between Holmes and the man who looks like Moriarty, despite which Holmes also declines to subscribe to the it-really-is-Moriarty theory, for reasons to be elaborated on in episode two. (Also there is some business involving a criminal scientist named Fenwick, who you can tell is a criminal because he's ugly in that special cartoon-villain way where if he wasn't walking and talking you could be forgiven for thinking he'd been dead for a while. He'll be back.) At the end of the episode, Holmes and Lestrade discover that Lestrade's robot assistant, which she had set to reading and analysing all of Dr Watson's journals, now believes that it is Watson. Everybody laughs (except Holmes, who looks seriously disturbed).

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

I quite liked it (it was co-produced by STV, so it was repeated all the time here, so they'd get their money's worth). I think my favourite episode was "Silver Blaze", which I recall as being the only one that was exactly the original story ... IN SPACE!

It is however, hilarious for a UK resident to hear "Yardies" being used as a slang term for Scotland Yard. (In Real London, Yardies are criminals of Jamaican origin.)

[thisbluespirit]

Well, glad to hear you're feeling better anyway!