Sherlock (Holmes)

Perhaps when you saw the trailer for the BBC's new series Sherlock you thought, ah, Flick likes Sherlock Holmes, she'll like this. Or maybe you thought, Robert Downey Jr isn't in it, she'll hate this. Or maybe you didn't care. Well, if you'd seen that it was created by Steven Moffat, you'd know that I would love it.

The modern setting is done nicely, with lots of smart updates and even a rationalisation as to how someone could possibly afford to live on Baker St. So John Watson is still back injured from Afghanistan but his alcoholic sibling is a sister, not a brother. Sherlock Holmes doesn't smoke a pipe but he uses nicotine patches. We've yet to see whether he'll wear a deerstalker because all the stories so far have taken place in the city and no gentleman wears a deerstalker anywhere except the country.

There are even lots of entertaining quotes to entertain the canon fans.("Three patch problem"? I see what you did there.)

The cast is very good, and I love Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes (doesn't Moffat have a habit of casting strange, alien-faced dudes?), chaotic under a calm exterior. I grew to like Martin Freeman more and more over the three weeks, and I even think I may be over the H2G2 film now. The Lestrade is very nice, and Mark Gatiss as Mycroft is fantastic, I'm so very glad they included him. I admit I was completely taken in by the ruse in the first episode where you're supposed to think he's a villain. I don't mind, it makes it more fun.

Overall, the mysteries are not the best. Even if you're unfamiliar with the sources, I defy you not to get the clues.

"Who could be the killer??"

"I don't know but let's linger on this shot of a taxi."

I can live with slightly lacklustre mysteries though, because I don't watch detective shows for the plot. Oh, it makes a stimulating background, but I'm really interested in the characters, which is why cop shows - or twists on the genre like House - live and die by their characterisation. So as long as Sherlock and John (which, by the way, feels very informal to write) banter and clash and are mistaken for a couple it's all good.

One of the very best things about the series, though, is the mise en scene. What a pretty, pretty show. The lighting! The camera moves! The editing! The editing is very showy, and I love it. They use wipes! And blurs! And it works! The graphics are impressive too, whether it's showing what people are looking at on their phones or how Sherlock analyses a situation. I even love the font they use.

The cliffhanger ending of episode three is delightfully evil and I'm very glad they'll be commissioning more.

In slightly less up to date news, it's as good a time as any to write about a slightly older version of Sherlock Holmes, Granada's 1980s series starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke then Edward Hardwicke.

Granada in the 80s seemed to have an uncanny knack for casting literary characters. Their adaptation of the Jeeves and Wooster books was perfectly cast with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, and as for Holmes… I have a workable theory that Jeremy Brett was grown in a lab for specifically this purpose, his looks and mannerisms are so startlingly exact.

They're faithful adaptations but there are still occasional jokes worked in which you'd only spot with very esoteric knowledge. Meg told me she had to watch an episode in class with the kind of expression which indicated that this was a bad memory, but I'm enjoying them immensely.