Sherlock is Back!

Mr. Y and I love the PBS series Sherlock, which originally airs in the UK on BBC.  I've written about its star, Benedict Cumberbatch, before.  Every time Mr. Y and I see him on screen, one of us always comments, "His eyes are so blue!"  I also like Martin Freeman from the original British The Office, and he's Bilbo Baggins in the new adaptation of The Hobbit.

The first episode of Sherlock is titled "A Scandal in Belgravia," a play on the famous Sherlock Holmes short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia."  Although the story of the show is completely original, there are several nods to the original short story.  Irene Adler makes her only appearance in "A Scandal in Bohemia," and she shows up on the show as a dominatrix who gets entangled with Sherlock.  Lara Pulver does a great job playing Adler - sexy and in control while also showing hints of vulnerability (side note: Lara was married to Joshua Dallas, who plays the Prince Charming on Once Upon a Time, and who is now dating his costar and love interest from that show, Ginnifer Goodwin). 

Part of the story involves a member of the royal family being blackmailed by Adler with compromising pictures, this time a female member of the British Royal Family (Belgravia is the district that houses Buckingham Palace), instead of the King of Bohemia.  As usual, the show does a great job of modernizing the stories while keeping the integral part of Sherlock Holmes intact.  It is great to see more of Mycroft as well - Mark Gatiss plays him as a great foil to Sherlock.

I find it fascinating that although Irene Adler appears only once in the stories, she has become such an integral part of the Sherlock Holmes canon.  Perhaps the fascination is because she is the only woman who has ever outwitted Sherlock, but I also think romanticism plays a large part.  Sherlock Holmes is such an analytical, non-emotional character, so when he shows any hints of feelings, it is magnified.  The show and the latest Robert Downey, Jr.-led Sherlock Holmes movies (where Adler is played by Rachel McAdams) are more overt about casting Adler as a romantic interest for Sherlock.  However, Arthur Conan Doyle (through Dr. Watson) describes Sherlock's feelings on Irene Adler in the beginning of "A Scandal in Bohemia" as being more like admiration than love:

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory."