Sherlock

This was recently on BBC America (after originally airing on the regular BBC.) I'm not a big Sherlock Holmes fan, but this show is pretty cool. Each season is only about 3 episodes long, but they are really well thought-out and made. It is also fast-paced and not one of those long, drawn-out shows. Not only does  it have a lot of facts and figures, but it has a lot of humor - British humor that you can easily understand. There are several running-gags throughout the show (like Holmes' hat.)

 

Benedict Cumberbatch (the guy who played Alan Turing in the "Imitation Game") plays Sherlock Holmes. He is the typical Holmes and yet he isn't the typical Holmes. Cumberbatch gives this Holmes a wide-range. He (Holmes) doesn't have the normal views and social understandings of most people and believes he is superior to them yet at the same time he starts to become more "normal."

 

Martin Freeman (the guy who played Bilbo Baggins in the "Hobbit" movies) plays Watson. In this series Watson is a doctor who was in the British Military in Afghanistan. Freeman brings this Watson out of the shadow of Holmes and makes him a central character.

 

The show brings the Sherlock Holmes' character to a new generation. It has all the main aspects of the books, but updates them. Instead of writing a journal Watson writes a blog, etc. It also deals with current issues that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wouldn't have thought about when he wrote the books in the late 1800s: homosexuality and terrorism.

 

I only wish the show had more episodes and was more widely-known in the US.