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Saturday, 05 May 2012

sherlockpbs_season2 Proposition: the British series Sherlock, beginning a second three-episode run on the PBS series Masterpiece Mystery on May 6, may well be the most delight-instilling television detective series ever filmed.

There may be better shows overall; Homicide, The Wire, and Luther come immediately to mind. But for material that makes you repeatedly revel in the joy of intelligence and ingenuity, little is in the class of this transmuting of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classics into the 21st Century.

The series does not simply update Doyle’s plotlines by injecting cell phones and horseless carriages. The show’s creators Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss have invented completely new stories that are crucially informed by more modern psychiatric insights, character interaction and a troubled zeitgeist that riff on Doyle’s tales while honoring the canon.

On the rare occasions that you can see what’s coming, it’s actually a pleasure because it’s confirmation of your own intelligence. Don’t get used to it; it won’t happen often.

Yes, Sherlock, Watson, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Moriarty and Irene Adler are all present, but each is a perfectly credible modern day counterpart.

For instance, Sherlock remains a thinking machine, but here his inability to deal with fellow human beings is more pronounced, the fallout more tragic and his brilliance has a whiff of high-functioning autism. Moriarty is not simply a criminal genius, but an unnerving psychopath who indulges in crime as an exercise for his love of pure evil for its own sake. And Irene Adler’s blackmail scheme...well, it’s nothing Doyle's original editors ever contemplated.

Besides the cunnigly-constructed plotlines and incisive character explorations, one of the series’ joys is its perverse joy in finding analogs between its world and Doyle’s. As with the first episodes, it’s not remotely required to be a Sherlockian to enjoy this series, but the scores upon scores of wry meta-references and inside jokes make it infinitely more rich for members of the Baker Street Irregulars.

The depth of knowledge of the lore to reach that elevated level of appreciation means that purists like my late father would love this series. Even the titles contain both clues to the current stories and plays on the originals: such as A Scandal in Belgravia (as opposed to Bohemia), The Hounds of Baskerville (notice the plural) and The Reichenbach Fall (notice the singular).

sherlockpbs2_season2 Among the dozen novel conceits is using graphics to illustrate what we have never been privy to before: the actual interior thought process of Holmes’ rapid fire ratiocination without him having to articulate them.

Each episode has deadly serious overtones, but the writers inject a good deal of gallows humor and lampoons their character’s expense. En route to testifying at a trial Watson advises Holmes at length to avoid long answers or being a smart-ass. Holmes, who acerbically alienates everyone, answers, “I’ll just be myself,” which of course is precisely what Watson is warning against.

The entire cast is back, thank goodness. Tall, slender with a mop of unruly hair and piercing eyes, the oddly good-looking Benedict Cumberbatch is simply brilliant in the title role of a man uncomfortable in the corporeal world, virtually a naïf. He disdains the occasional invasion of human emotions not simply because they cloud logic. He secretly fears them because for all his intellectual prowess, he does not understand them, especially when he feels something himself.

Martin Freeman (soon to star in The Hobbit) is a distinctly un-fuddyduddy Watson, brave, intelligent, loyal, resourceful and a surgeon who saw action in the Mideast. He is also the grease and salve that makes it possible for the decidedly asocial Holmes to function in the real world where his eccentricities in extremis would otherwise have him locked up as insane or beaten to death in an alley behind a pub—or find him a suicide out of loneliness.

The guest cast is superb from terrified Russell Tovey (he of the big ears in Being Human) to the delectable Lara Pulver (MI-5’s last season as well as Claudine Crane in True Blood) creating an indelible character as the dominatrix/master criminal Irene Adler. And there has never been a more unnerving, implacable Moriarty as Andrew Scott.

The series also benefits from deft direction and imaginative editing, especially the “wipes” when a character walks across a scene and changes the environment behind him as he crosses.

The biggest change in this series is that while cell phones and technology still play a role in the investigatory process, Holmes does not rely as heavily on a seemingly impossible command of the use of Smartphones as an instant source of data.

This Sherlock is a thoroughly thrilling exercise for thinking television viewers.

The game is afoot.

The second season of Sherlock airs at 9 pm Sundays on PBS. Check your local listings for time changes and encores.
Here are the episodes
May 6: A Scandal in Belgravia
May 13: The Hounds of Baskerville
May 20: The Reichenbach Fall

Photo: Top: Benedict Cumbersnatch, seated, as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson. Center: Cumbersnatch, left, and Freeman. PBS photos

New Sherlock Returns to Pbs

Created By Alias

Bill Hirschman

Alias

new-sherlock-returns-to-pbs

Photo: Top: Benedict Cumbersnatch, seated, as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson. Center: Cumbersnatch, left, and Freeman. PBS photos

Wednesday, 02 May 2012

Harlan Coben's Elephant

Oline Cogdill

Roadside oddities fascinate me.

You know those huge pieces of kitsch that dot American roads, such as the giant catsup (that's how it's spelled) bottle in in Collinsville, Illinois; the Wigwam Village Motel in Cave City, Kentucky; the world's largest chair in Aniston, Alabama, and the endless parade of giant coffee pots that serve as restaurants, nightclubs and shops.

And don't forget the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, and the "world's largest basket," which is the seven-story corporate headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company in Ohio.

Perhaps Harlan Coben feels the same way.

In the excellent Stay Close, Coben concentrates on three people whose past influences their past. Two have risen above what happened years before; one is mired in it.

Coben's 22nd novel again shows his acumen for delving into our most intimate fears.

And then there's Lucy the Margate (N.J.) Elephant, a six-story building shaped like an elephant. Lucy is the world's largest elephant, and the only one in America designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Lucy serves as a meeting spot for two characters in Stay Close. She is a safe place that reminds them of the good times they had.

"Lucy, hovering in the dark, silhouetted by the moon. As always, no matter how many times she had seen her, Megan stared up at Lucy in childlike awe."

According to roadsideamerica.com, Lucy was built in 1881 by James V. Lafferty, a real estate developer with a knack for promotion. Weighing 90 tons, covered with 12,000 square feet of sheet tin, Lucy was a functioning building, serving first as a real estate office, as a summer home, even briefly as a tavern, until unruly drunks nearly burned her down. She also gave people a reason to come to Margate City while Lafferty gave his real estate pitch, according to roadsideamerica.com.

While Lucy brings a bit of levity to Stay Close, she never interfers with Coben's serious plot.

Harlan Coben's Elephant

Created By Alias

Oline Cogdill

Alias

harlan-cobens-elephant

Sunday, 29 April 2012

The Raven: 3 Stars

Oline Cogdill

raven_cusack One of the enduring mysteries about Edgar Allan Poe is how he spent the last week or so of his life. He was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, on Oct. 3, 1849, “in great distress. . . in need of immediate assistance,” according the newspaper accounts of the day. Poe would die four days later, never coherent enough to tell what had happened to him or why he kept repeating the name “Reynolds.”

So it’s quite possible--though not probable—that the father of the American detective story spent his last days helping the Baltimore police catch a serial killer who based his crimes on Poe’s macabre works as depicted in the highly entertaining movie The Raven.

And possible—though not probable—makes for an intriguing film that is resplendent with details about Poe’s life and work while capturing the spirit of the man, whose fiction and poetry have never gone out of fashion. There’s a reason why the Mystery Writers of America named its version of the Oscars after Poe; the Edgar Awards were announced just last Thursday, which may be the only reason to release The Raven now. While 2012 is the 203rd anniversary of his birth, Poe was born in January and died in October.

The Raven is set during the week before the death of Poe (played by an intriguing John Cusack). On the downside of his career, Poe is a broke, belligerent drunk, so desperate for alcohol he’s willing to get into a fight just to steal a man’s drink. His meager livelihood comes from the acid-dipped reviews he writes for the Baltimore Patriot. But even that is drying up. Instead of running Poe’s scathing review of the latest work by Longfellow, the editor runs Longfellow’s poem. “People like Longfellow,” the editor tells the ranting Poe. Poe is madly in love with Emily (a lovely Alice Eve) whose father Colonel Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson) despises him. After all, would you want your daughter to marry Poe?

raven2_cusack2 The murder of a woman and her daughter in a supposedly locked room is being investigated by the police. Strong-jawed Detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans, Zeus in The Immortals) notices that the murder scene has an uncanny resemblance to the killings in Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. The detective doesn’t suspect Poe but believes there is some connection between the author and the killer that only Poe can figure out. “We are in need of your unwholesome expertise,” says Fields. This rings even truer when another murder happens, this time with allusions to The Pit and The Pendulum, and the victim is another critic whose venomous feud with Poe was played out in the newspapers.

The violence escalates as the killer challenges the broken-down Poe to write more stories. “I’ve used up all my tricks,” says Poe, who clearly has writers’ block. The game changer is when Emily is kidnapped.

Director James McTeigue (V For Vendetta) wraps The Raven in a Gothic mist that envelopes Baltimore (actually a convincing Serbia and Hungary) as it oozes from every street and also blankets the countryside. The Raven depicts a Baltimore as moody and imbued in squalor as Poe himself. Baltimore also seems to be a city full of ravens. Ravens that swoop down in parks; ravens that flutter out of caskets; ravens that feast on carrion in the streets; ravens everywhere, especially in Poe’s mind.

And as Poe, John Cusack, a personal favorite, slips into the mindset of a drunken, out of control Poe who has pretty much
alienated everyone around him. Cusack easily sheds his High Fidelity/Grosse Pointe Blank/Say Anything persona for that of a
brilliant writer drowning himself in alcoholic haze. His devastation over how his stories are being corrupted is credible.

Scriptwriters Hannah Shakespeare and Ben Livingston have clearly done their homework, loading The Raven with a multitude of details about on Poe and his work. For example, Poe’s last words are apparently accurately portrayed in The Raven. Yet there are a few jarring differences such as the character named Griswold. A critic named Rufus Griswold and Poe did hate each other; Griswald wrote his enemy’s obit and then did his best to turn readers against the late Poe. While the newspaper headlines scream “serial killer,” that’s a 20th century term.

Still, The Raven serves Poe and his reputation well. Poe’s work withstands the centuries. Evermore.

Rated R for bloody violence and grisly images; 111 minutes.

(And here's Poe's poem The Raven.)