Holmes, Sweet Holmes

I'm more than a little annoyed. I recently read that the BBC is planning a new Sherlock Holmes series, the twist this time being that it has a contemporary setting. No doubt they feel it can follow in the footsteps of some of their other successful reinventions of classic characters, such as Doctor Who, Robin Hood, Merlin and Jekyll. Now, it isn't the fact that they intend ripping Homes out of his Victorian setting and plonking him down in the modern world that I object, although I'm sure that there are whole legions of hardcore Holmes fans shouting 'sacrilege', even as I type this. Oh no, I actually think it's an idea with considerable merit. After all, until the Basil Rathbone version of the Hound of the Baskervilles in the late 1930s, film adaptations had usually given the stories a contemporary setting and, after the series moved to Universal in the 1940s, so did the Rathbone pictures. Post-war, 'authentic' Victorian settings became the norm. So, it has already been established that a ,modernised' Holmes can work.

No, my problem lies with the fact that it is my bloody idea! I've been banging on about a present-day version of Sherlock Holmes for years now! I had some pretty radical ideas, and I'm telling you now, if in this proposed BBC version Mrs Hudson has her own TV cookery show, or Dr Watson drives a flashy sports car and trades on his association with Holmes o pull the birds, I'm going to be taking legal action! Oh, and let's not forget Watson's stint on Breakfast TV as a phone-in doctor, where he both dispenses medical advice and recruits prospective (female) clients for Holmes, or his attempts to sell his adventures with Holmes to producers as a TV format. And I want to make it quite clear that if they want to get smart and have Watson suffering from a war wound received during his stint as an army medic in Afghanistan, tough! I've just staked that territory out! Obviously, the key to any such treatment would be the portrayal of Holmes himself. Perhaps having him seen struggling with the superstar status Watson's accounts of his exploits have bestowed upon him would be the best approach. Basically, he wants to appear on obscure BBC4 programmes about criminology, but instead keeps getting booked on Jonathon Ross or Graham Norton. You culd also have a sub-plot where he keeps getting offered a job presenting a Time Team-type programme where a team of top detectives try and solve some notorious unsolved murder. But like I said earlier, if the beeb want to use any of these ideas, tough! Still, whatever they do go for would still have to be better than that bloody Holmes film Guy Ritchie is making - Moriarty as a geezer! What the fuck!