plot was surprisingly woke. glad we're still allowed to say colonialism is bad and the british empire sucks
also, presents societal problem -> criticises the system causing it -> presents symptom of system -> resolves symptom and takes steps to dismantle the system itself. nice! most plots like this would solve the symptom while leaving the system intact so this was very refreshing
the mystery is like, fine? it's less "convenient clue leading us to the next convenient clue" than the previous 2 movies and the convenient clues were placed on purpose so they're forgivable
not sure what kidnapping the mother achieved. leading enola to the medals ig?
however the entire plot rests on moriarty which i never like but i especially dislike it here coz it's breathtakingly racist
i really hate how much of all 3 movies but especially this one rests on enola and her stupid ass boyfriend tho. im sure this goes hard if you ship them but omfg stop going for dead wife montage swims in the ocean your brother has been kidnapped!!!!!!!!!
watson casting is soooo fucking good tho they really struck gold w that one. and he even got some backstory! i don't think it was strictly necessary but it's nice to know they thought about how he got here
wish they'd gone a little harder in the soundtrack and all the ai illustrations were really gross. also the audio editing was janky in a few places. other than that it's like decently paced and put together but those did grind my gears a bit
overall: wayyy too much focus on weddings and romance. not nearly enough focus on enola. but the mystery is better done than the previous two. i just wish we'd gotten to see holmes and watson interact coz literally what's the point otherwise
updated tierlist coz it's been too long since the last one. all my own extremely biased opinions mostly based on the following:
did the writer understand the holmes & watson relationship (are they nice to each other; is it clear they both like each other and couldn't exist alone)
is watson shown to have his own skills that are necessary for the plot just as much as holmes's skills are
is the mystery good (can the viewer follow along and solve it if they pay attention; are the clues things that a crime would actually have or are they just newspaper riddles or extreme conveniences that the writer made up bc they couldn't come up with actual clues)
vertical alignments are on purpose! some of these don't 100% fit into just one category so i moved them up/down to show my level of enjoyment better
horizontal alignments are completely random, it's sllliiightly the order i watched them in but mostly i just put whatever i remembered next.
"are any of these canonically gay?" mostly no☹️ except:
private life (gay holmes)
irregulars (gay watson)
furtive festivity (youtube short where they're a couple)
"why is xy so low?":
sherlock & daughter: idt i need to justify this one but heterosexual + mid. also the twist being that she's his daughter is so annoying to me. coz like that's not a twist. that's something you find out the second you read the title.
watson: would probably be good if it wasn't a holmes adaptation but it's being choked to death by being forced to shoehorn in holmes references. also im still angry they said holmes was fucking not only irene adler but also mrs hudson. please be serious. it's also just not my thing at all which isn't its fault but this is MY blorbo and MY subjective opinion so down it goes
house: this ones probably gonna be controversial but i didn't like house md i genuinely cannot fucking stand house. im fine with unlikable characters but his misogyny and constant objectification of children is repulsive to me. i would've put up with it but then they decided to have him get with cuddy which was like, my last straw. or rather it was like putting straws on a camel one by one and then suddenly dropping a block of cement instead
bbc: self explanatory i hope
holmes & watson: i made no less than 3 separate attemps to watch this fucking movie but i couldn't make it more than like 20 minutes. it's very rare i can't manage to hatewatch something but this one bested me.
i didn't include any podcasts because i didn't enjoy any of the ones i listened to but i don't want to be mean to small indie creators💔💔 but i think most people would enjoy them (and they're gayer than the screen adaptations) i'm just very picky
okay phew. my thoughts on watson episode 1. might put a readmore coz it'll probably get long. anyway um
so 💥 IN MY OPINION 💥 it was not good but it wasn't bad either it's the exact perfect mid i usually get with american episodic tv especially one trying to adapt something from england. not even a complaint btw i would've been shocked if it was good. i do think they needed a much stronger pilot but it was like... fine? like i had a good time with it overall and then sometimes i went HRHRGH WHAT. but anyway let's go category by category otherwise this'll be even more incoherent than it already is. so yeah cut incoming this is gonna be long as hell i was right
1) characters
watson: i elaborated on this topic in an earlier post but to sum it up, i think watson's personhood, by nature of being the pov character in the novels, revolves so strongly around holmes that it's an incredibly difficult task to define who he is without holmes, and especially to portray it. so far nothing this watson has said or done made me go "he wouldn't fucking say that" but at the same time nothing's made me go "he WOULD fucking say that" either. no actually him immediately jumping into a waterfall without any hesitation coz he saw holmes go in was extremely in character he would fucking do that. but like that just comes back to the whole issue of like, that's in character for him bc it's about holmes. but the rest? like who even is he? esp here where he can't even be defined by his position in his society or his era or his city because he's in modern day americatown instead of victorian england. so like overall i like the guy but as soon as the scene isn't about holmes he stops being watson and just becomes generic medical show leading man. i'm very curious to see if they can manage to make me feel like i really am watching dr john watson instead of just a random guy. but again outside of not really being watson i like him he seems fun
adam and stephens: i don't know why the showrunners would fuck themselves like this like why are you making your job so much harder by having 1 guy play 2 guys. edit ok apparently it's literally coz the showrunner wanted something challenging. well i hate it. also i don't think the twin thing works on any front it just makes me very uncomfortable to watch a guy trying his absolute hardest to pretend to be two separate people. it sucks. hopefully their plots will be interesting at least. calling it now there's gonna be a plot where they switch places
ingrid: i like her she's really hot imean interesting but her energy is so millenial i feel like she's gonna drop an umm that just happened! any second now. but that's not the character's or the actor's fault it's just a vibe i get
sasha: i had to look up her name on wikipedia icl but i only know the other people's names because every time a name was mentioned i rewound and paused and said OK THATS [insert name]. DONT FORGET. she just didnt get a proper namedrop ig. anyway i have 0 thoughts abt her other than her first line being about her accent which then proceeded to completely disappear in her 3rd line and then come and go as it pleased for the rest of the episode was really funny. the adoption thing is interesting tho let's see where they go with that
mary: mary-s (maries?) tend to be very strangely written bc every time they're included the writer wants to do a subversion of the generic irrelevant wife from the victorian era stories so she's usually a plot relevant badass which like. i don't think that's necessary. like you don't have to be doing all that. like i don't mind i'm usually neutral abt any given mary i just think it's annoying that they all default to that instead of doing literally anything interesting. so it's a relief that i actually like this mary coz even though she's still the usual plot relevant badass, it's not accompanied by her being watson's epic cool girlfriend she gets to be her own person. like as far as i can tell they're not gonna get back together #i ❤️ divorce. she's even bisexual!! sweep
shinwell: whyyyyy does he talk like that omg. please. also guy from the east end is a criminal duuuuude thats crazy however do they come up with these. sucks so bad. i'm gonna like him out of spite but he's such a bad character what are we doing
moriarty: what can i fucking say man. why is he here. also the acting was so bad??? like wh??? ???? why was it this bad. i guess you could blame the script but like, second takes exist yknow. you can do another one if the first take sucks. are you aware. anyway i hate it when moriarty is a big bad but we'll get into that in a later section... can't say much abt his character he was only in 1 scene. usually i'm a huge fan of colourblind casting but i don't get making him a poc if you're gonna make him the horrible evil mastermind but hey at least he's not a black woman killing orphans for money like in enola. still don't know why they did that. getting off topic anyway why did he also get hit with the yankify beam. does anyone remember england. sherlock holmes was there
2) the plot
the episode's plot: it was... fine? like it was stupid as hell but it's a medical drama so whatever. patient needs mouse bites to live. this vexes me. etc. i do think the whole today☝️ we're 🧑🤝🧑 NOT ❌ doctors ⚕️ we're 😎 detectives 🕵️ was kinda cringe but it's like the entire premise of the show so it's very much a megszoksz vagy megszöksz situation. how do you say that in english. my way or the highway. take it or leave it. you get what i mean
the overarching plot: i mean obviously this was one episode so i can't reflect on the entire thing but i CAN look at the setups and think about them. it's nice that a major part of this show seems to be watson coping with the absence of holmes. i think they should focus on it slightly more, like acd watson's life was essentially over and pointless post reichenbach and i don't think they fully emphasise the severity of that but we only have one episode so we'll see. i am very very annoyed that moriarty is a presence at all in this show and especially that they didn't even have enough faith either in the audience or their own material to wait a bit before revealing him. episode one bam he's there and he's immediately named. it sucks. we do not need him. hold my hand. look me in the eye. it's ok to write a holmes adaptation where moriarty doesn't keep coming back from the dead. it's ok to have a different villain. or just regular ass criminals that aren't masterminds. it's fine. it's ok. you can just have moran if you're desperate. in fact you SHOULD have moran we're literally post final problem pre empty house this is moran's main time in the spotlight. but whatever what's done is done. i just think what's done is dumb as hell
3) the technical stuff that reviewers love talking about to make themselves sound smarter
the dialogue: chief. it's not good. like it's not outstandingly bad but there were some lines that made me go 😬 and some of them are just. so bad. eugh. like i alluded to in ingrid's section, if a script feels like it could smoothly fit an mcu style quip without it feeling out of place, maybe reconsider the lines you're writing.
the lighting/colours: i actually really like this, i think it gives the show a very distinctive look. i do think it's weird how ambient all the lighting is in this hospital but it's a lot nicer than the horrible white and blue you'd normally get, plus as a serial surgery haver i would much prefer to have this to the inhumane buzzing leds. not to mention i'm eastern european so compared to our hospitals, this place is like a spaceship.
cinnamon topography: i just watched brilliant minds last week which had some of the most beautiful shots i have ever seen and easily the most beautiful shots i've ever seen in an episodic medical drama which is unfortunate for this show because it's also very competent in this field but my standards are all the way up. but yea overall the shots range from generic-good to pretty good so no complaints there. i really liked the shot of watson and mary talking with the garage pillar separating them, and the overhead shot of a board that says WE LIE in big red letters made me laugh really hard
4) miscellaneous
my cat just crawled into my lap while i was trying to spell meschallenios everyone shut up. ok she was there for an hour and then left so back to it
acd story references: i always think these are fun and very satisfying to clock, and by god there were a lot of them in just this one ep. my episode was like 240p so i couldn't really observe the background details (to be remedied once i get my paws on 1080p) but even then there was a ton of stuff to go duuude 🫵 at. the 1881 robot (year study in scarlet is set in) which was then immediately revealed to be called clyde (elementary turtle) was really funny like why are we referencemaxxing. like i mentioned in the john watson post, i hope they won't overly rely on them, but it was fun to pay a little extra attention to everything to see if there was a reference hidden anywhere
5) overall
my general faith in this is. very little. a lot of people have a lot of goodwill for this show, both because of elementary (which i haven't seen sorry) and because of morris chestnut (who i didn't know before this but i'm very much the kinda person who prefers to not even know the names of actors) but neither of those have any impact on my opinion or my trust in the show, nor do i think it should. even if elementary was my favourite show, i'd still expect watson to win me over just by itself. i'm also very worried about some comments the showrunner made, especially the one abt adler being holmes's lover (what?? 💀) none of which inspire confidence but again that's not part of the show either and if the show itself is good, i don't care what the showrunner thinks.
but is the show itself good? i mean, it's not bad and i never expected it to be good. i'm a huge fan of holmes adaptations and have seen way too many of them (pretty much every single one that's not unwatchably bad, and then some) so i'm always hyped when there's a new one. i don't hate this by any means, i'm glad it exists and it was a fun way to spend 2 hours watching something that's 40 minutes long and then an entire day writing a review of it.
like i said at the beginning of this unnecessarily long post, it's perfectly mid with some tentative swings in both positive and negative directions which is probably why i was able to write this much about it. if it was good i would've just said IT SLAPS YAYY YIPPIE and if it was bad i would've said "holy shit this is the worst thing i have ever seen" and that would've been it but instead here we are. hope you're glad you spent the past 7 hours reading this instead of war and peace. thank you for coming and hopefully my review of episode 2 will be a more managable size coz lowkey what the hell am i doing lol. goodbye
sherlock & co. review from an insane person (me) coz this is like. the 25th? sherlock adaptation i've checked out so ofc i have opinions on everything ever. and ik ppl who work on indie podcasts browse tumblr sometimes so just in case you work on this DON'T click keep reading, this post is not for youuu shoo. thanks x
ok so far it's like. fine? which is lowkey sad coz i wish it was smtg i really liked but it hasn't gripped me yet which is a shame but yknow. early days. i'm giving it time since it's only 15 episodes so far
my main issue is like. i really wish it wasn't so obviously influenced by bbc but it just so clearly is which is a shaaame like it's better than bbc in every aspect but yknow. not a high bar to clear. like it kinda feels like they liked a lot of things abt bbc and set out to fix the bad parts (h&w friendship being nonexistent, the mysteries being shit) but just kept the rest? in some places keeping things that were invented by bbc which is. baffling tbh
i'm not really picky when it comes to h&w personalities like i think it's fine to just do whatever you want w them, i think it's really fun when an adaptation gives them different personalities than what you're used to but, and this is where it feels far too bbc-ish for comfort, i just don't like it when sherlock is a cunt for no reason? like. he's not a mean person he's only mean in bbc coz moffat thought house md was cool and ripped it off. can we stop making him mean pleeeease 😭 he's just some guy..................
h&w relationship wise it's like... ok so i tend to go into adaptations with a fully clean slate so like i never let my general attachment to them influence how i view them in specific adaptations, the work itself needs to sell me on both the characters and the relationship and like... here neither of those really happened yet which makes me sad coz i think by now it should've but i'm giving it time. at least they're friends and i like that watson is useful for cases/knows things holmes doesn't sometimes coz thats like. such an essential element to sh stories for me and a loooottt of adaptations tend to just completely forget it so that's a win but idk if anything they're too tame? like i dont expect a romance but they can't just be casual friends they need to be bat shit crazy about each other. to me. but like maybe that'll develop over the rest of the podcast we'll see
kinda related to that point but case-wise i think holmes is a bit too ahead of everyone else sometimes which isn't inherently a problem but it does once again smell of bbc which like. noone should ever emulate moffat writing don't do that 🙏 god bles. but i've been able to solve every case along with/before the mcs which is like. thee point of mystery stories for me so yea i really like the stories themselves so far, especially the way they manage to make them solvable even without visuals or narration. OH and i almost forgot but i rly like the soundtrack, i love it when sh soundtracks have a heavy emphasis on violins coz. yknow
howeverr i am on my hands and knees begging them not to give watson a girlfriend tho like please oh myfffucking god . obvs watsonlock doesn't usually factor into my enjoyment of adaptations given that like. y'know. out of the hundreds out there theres only two where either of them is even gay so it's not something i expect nor require but like. to me it is essential that these two ppl are insane abt each other and don't really have anyone else, definitely noone important. like even the rdj movies got this despite ritchie's obsession w the 2 men 1 woman dynamic so idk why i'm constantly having to wage a war against random unnecessary romances for either watson or, god forbid, holmes. when the only interesting relationship either of these men have is with each other. that one granada holmes quote about them choosing not to include mary coz holmes and watson dont need anyone else etc etc. like i seriously dislike it when they introduce anyone else like cmonnnnnn thog dont care
anyway tldr. i guess if asked to pick a short description i'd say. promising? i hope it's gonna be good in the long run. the way they do mysteries is already something i like so. i hope they keep that up and i hope the h&w relationship evolves into something i enjoy coz so far i'm like. i can see the bones of smtg i'll potentially like but it's not there yet. but also like. this is an indie production i'm listening to for free so ion wanna rip into it these are mainly just what i liked/disliked based on the preferences i developed with this one quick trick (grow up completely insane abt sherlock holmes -> consume every adaptation that you can get your paws on -> no profit)
Just saw your post about the many sherlock holmes adaptations and their problems and wanted to ask, what do you think are the worst and best adaptations + your opinion on the bbc show vs guy ritchie’s adaptation
PHEW okay big question. so in my personal opinion my favourite adaptation is the ritchie one and my least favourite is bbc. objectively speaking the worst ones are ... well there's a lot I'm ngl I'm very picky but probably Holmes & Watson, the absolute trainwreck that some cruel force allowed to be made and released in 2018 which is awful in every single way like it's genuinely unwatchable. Granada/the Jeremy Brett one is probably the most faithful, but i think Murder by decree and Without a clue are great takes on it, and of course The private life of SH is iconic and Russian Holmes is close to my heart because the locations and architecture etc look really similar to where i live so it's really special that way. (i actually have a tierlist of almost every adaptation I've seen, there's been more since but I've been too lazy to update it lmao)
putting this under a cut because it got LONG
i think there's several layers to what makes an adaptation great, like to ME the most important thing is that they nail the h&w dynamic, either by using the one in the books or by making it clear that they understood what the dynamic was and chose to put a different spin on it but like. if they're not obviously "can't live without each other" friends and (at least) a little bit gay then what's the point. also with modern adaptations there's smtg I've literally only seen done right ONE time, which is Holmes's drug use where everyone adapting it to the 21st century insists on keeping it cocaine or smtg similar? which, like, no????? like ppl don't seem to realise that when he was written, cocaine was like. perfectly acceptable. and Watson still worries about it because he's a doctor but that's in no way equivalent to someone NOW using cocaine and their doctor friend worrying. there's that super old post that's like "modern holmes should be addicted to energy drinks" and well yeah. absolutely that, or the way House md solved it by having him be addicted to painkillers that he gets in a kinda shady way sometimes.
n then obviously there's the cases. again this is an opinion but i think it's good when they're straight up adapted, and i think it's good when they invent a brand new mystery, but i absolutely cannot Stand when they take an existing case from the books but put their own ~special smart boy~ spin on it cough cough MOFFAT like the worst examples of this are probably the way he butchered Baskerville and ASIB because he thought he was sooo much smarter than everyone and couldn't just adapt these extremely iconic stories straight up, nonono let's make them a billion times worse.
as for Ritchie vs BBC, i don't really think i can compare them, simply because I can't be objective? like the rdj holmes movies are easily among my favourite movies of all time, not because they're so outstandingly good but simply because I'm so attached to them, while even a mention of BBC can send me into feral dog mode. not to mention my history w them is 1. complicated 2. inherently tied to each other so yeah i don't think an objective comparison from me is really possible, at least if i want to avoid making this response a 10 hour read. but umm if i wanna go by key points:
1. i think rdj absolutely nails the h&w dynamic while bbc completely butchers it
2. rdj kinda expands his drug use but i think it works rly well with the kinda person his holmes is, i fucking hate the way bbc treats his drug use and the only slightly nice moment about it was in the unaired pilot that. well. didn't air
3. i haaaaate the way rdj handles irene and i fucking. despise beyond words the way bbc handles irene. i dont think i have ever seen irene adapted well it's fucking miserable
4. i think the cases in rdj are... fine? they're not good tbh as in like if i was here for a mystery I wouldn't really like it BUT they're original and written in a way where they give you, the viewer, all the clues that Holmes has, so you have the ability to figure out the solutions along with him, which is crucial to any sh adaptation (and mystery in general). it's also camp and fun and ridiculous which i really like so yea no complaints from me. bbc on the other hand. god. jesus. well i mentioned this before but i fucking hate the way they adapt every story to be almost the same but way way worse because they think they're so much smarter than the books AND the viewers. and this segways into
5. aka their treatment of watson. i fawking love rdj watson i think he's one of the best watsons out there and i like him coz of his whole attitude and personality but i also think he's written extremely well in that so often adaptations fall into the trap i mentioned in the other post where they think holmes is the smartest specialest boy ever and they're just like him fr and he doesn't need anyone so watson is either just some useless guy trying and failing to keep up with holmes or a straight up punching bag. but here they actually make Watson not just competent but absolutely indispensable to both Holmes and the story, it's clear that Holmes both relies on him in things he doesn't know as well as Watson does (crucial!!!!!) and trusts him (watson) to figure things out almost as well as he (holmes) can which i think are incredibly good and important things to put in an adaptation because at the end of the day it's holmes and watson not holmes and some guy who's sometimes there to be talked at and not understand things. which of course brings me to bbc where . literally the only thing john does is get kidnapped like he's barely even there for the cases let alone HELP in any way. so yeah.
this could go on to be incredibly long because i am. absolutely insane about sherlock holmes but I'm gonna end it here, if you have any questions feel free to ask, i (evidently) really love talking about them so
okayyy as per my "must watch every new sh adaptation" contract i watched enola holmes 2 so here's my thoughts
first of all it was way better than the first one but that's not saying much coz that bar is incredibly low since i hated the first one
but the thing is. i only liked this because the bits with sherlock were cool and i really like their take on him which is ironic since the whole point of these movies is that enola is a cool interesting #girlboss and better than her brother but then the only good parts of the movie are the parts with her brother coz she's just insanely boring😭😭 but also it was just . SO bad to see holmes without watson. he shouldn't be alone!! actually im making this a separate post
the plot was so . painfully predictable like idk if anyone else felt it but for me any time there was, well, anything, i immediately went "oh it's [solution] . no wait that'd be wayyyy too fucking simple even a toddler would guess this there's no way it's this" and then it was that. every single time. like im not kidding this happened w literally every clue/mystery/reveal etc like. broooo!!!!
they repeated the bs of the first movie where enola barely solves anything and it takes her ages to realise anything while they show sherlock figuring out the same things in seconds and then they constantly parade her around like shes smarter than sherlock while she not only never actually figures out anything that he doesn't, it's actually the opposite
another thing i hated in the first movie that they brought into this too and that many period dramas fall victim to is the way they do activism like. idk how to explain this one well but why is the feminist and workers rights message of the movie viewed through a modern lense despite being set in 1885. like we dont need someone to look us in the eyes and snarkily be like girls can fight! girls should vote! victorian orphans working in factories is bad! when literally anyone with a brain already knows that
then there's the worst offense imo which is that . it's just insanely racist ?????? like how are you gonna do colourblind casting but only when it suits you. ofc all the lords in parliament are white men but somehow the cops are people of colour??????? and then ofc there's worst bit where where netflix finally cast a dark skinned black woman and SHE'S FUCKING MORIARTY???? and she kills children in order to have more money??????!😭😭😭😭😭 are y'all insane... like i wannnnt to say that we should be able to cast poc to play villains without it having racist implications but girl not when every main character except a random orphan and a woman who's in like 3 scenes are white.
VERY sad to say i watched this movie coz it looked so fucking stupid but i ended up really liking it😔 i mean the plot is really dumb and the cgi is passable at best but im literally obsessed w the characterisations like it's some of the best ive ever seen. also the holmes/watson dynamic.... outstanding
