BBC One's highly acclaimed, multi-award winning drama, Sherlock, returns to our screens on New Year's Day, 2012. Starring the impeccable duo of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, the contemporary adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic detective stories comes back for a second series with three, 90-minute films – A Scandal in Belgravia, The Hounds of Baskerville, and The Reichenbach Fall.
Co-created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, the first series became a sudden hit in Summer 2010, drawing in an audience of over 9 million viewers and has since been sold in 180 countries worldwide. However, after having such a huge success with the first series, how does one follow up on that? “Well this year, knowing we were a huge hit, I suppose we felt 'let's do the three big things'; The Woman, The Hound and The Fall,” said Moffat in regards to their plans with series two. “Instead of making people wait years and years, we thought - to hell with deferred pleasure, let's just do it now, more, sooner, faster! That also means we see three different sides to Sherlock. We have Sherlock and love, Sherlock and fear and Sherlock and death. He definitely goes through the mill in this new series.”
In the first episode, A Scandal in Belgravia (scripted by Steven Moffat), a case of blackmail and some compromising photographs threaten the heart of the British establishment. Sherlock and John find themselves embroiled in a battle against international terrorists, rogue CIA agents and a conspiracy involving the British government, and Sherlock engages in a battle of wits with an antagonist as cold, ruthless and brilliant as himself... To Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler will always be the woman.
The second episode, an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, has been written by Mark Gatiss – who also plays Sherlock's brother, Mycroft, in the series. “My idea for Baskerville was, as ever, to look for the 'modern',” Gatiss said about his re-imagining of this Holmes classic. “Rather than setting it in a spooky old house, I wanted to find the sort of thing that frightens us today. We're still a very credulous species but we tend to be more afraid of secret goings-on and conspiracy theories. So I thought, what about a scary weapons research place out on Dartmoor? Where secret animal experimentation or something similarly terrible was taking place.”
“The reputation of the story was obviously a challenge, it's the most famous and best-loved of them all. No pressure! At its heart, though, it's a horror story and horror is a big part of the appeal of Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to make it the scariest version there's ever been. Trying to work that out almost killed me!”
The series concludes with The Reichenbach Fall, scripted by Stephen Thompson, and will see the fall of the world's greatest consulting detective at the hands of his arch-nemesis – Moriarty...
Both Gatiss and Moffat are self-professed Sherlock Holmes nerds, and despite initial scepticism surrounding the modernisation of the most famous fictional detective of all time, they have gone on to create a series that is a truly remarkable tribute to the works of Conan Doyle. And is that not also a testament to Conan Doyle's stories, in that almost 125 years since they were written, the tales of Sherlock Holmes are still just as relevant to us now as they were then, and stand as the perfect example of superb characterisation and narrative writing. It's little wonder that Sherlock Holmes is one of our most loved pieces of literature!
After the sublime first series, I for one can not wait until series two hits our screens!
Sherlock returns at 8.10pm, 1st January 2012 on BBC One.
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