Mark Gatiss on the new series of Sherlock (UK, April 10, 2011)
The game is afoot: the mystery of what awaits fans of last year’s hit BBC series Sherlock - which transplanted Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary Victorian detective into the present day – received its first clues today from show co-runner Mark Gatiss at the Kapow! Comic Con in London.
“We knew after having a successful first run that the natural order would be to do three of the most famous [stories],” explained Gatiss to a packed, rapt audience, “being a version of A Scandal in Bohemia, a version of The Hound of the Baskervilles and a version of The Final Problem.”
Hound of the Baskervilles needs little introduction, but for non-hardcore Holmes buffs, Bohemia pits the super sleuth against one Irene Adler (the character Rachel McAdams played in the recent Guy Ritchie movie) and The Final Problem has the infamous Holmes vs. Moriarty duel at the Reichenbach Falls. Gatiss discussed the challenges he and co-creator Steven Moffat face in updating these tales for their contemporary setting.
“There’s the question of how to go out on a cliffhanger and then the thematic things of the three stories, where we were trying to get to,” he said, “and what Sherlock and John’s relationship is a little further on. You can’t just go back to: ‘You have no emotions.’ ‘I don’t care.’ You’ve got to move on somewhere and make sure the other characters have something of a journey too.”
In terms of divying up the writing, Gatiss also divulged that “Steve wanted to do the twisted love story [A Scandal in Bohemia], I’m doing the Gothic horror [Baskervilles] and Steve Thompson [who wrote Series 1’s The Blind Banker] is doing The Final Problem.”
Gatiss also joked about sharing star Martin Freeman, now playing Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, with Peter Jackson. “I’ve written the hobbit in [to Sherlock],” he laughed. “No, amazingly they’re working around us. I know that when Martin gets off the plane he’s going to be 13 stone heavier, with hairy feet. And they’re a little behind [schedule], I don’t think they’ve done as much as they’d wanted to, but Martin’s back with us and then back to New Zealand.”[link here]
No not Steve Thompson, I do not trust him with anything, and especially not something as important as Reichenbach D: Not with how weak The Blind Banker was.
And why is “A Scandal in Bohemia” the “twisted love story”? You say that as though it had something to do with Irene Adler being there.
The interviewer much have gotten confused. Clearly twisted love story is a reference to Moriarty.
Bluh, Scandal in Bohemia. I mean, Irene’s alright, but they always blow it out of proportion. She’s in the one story, teaches Holmes a lesson, and is never mentioned by name again. Holmes is most emphatically not into the ladies, or romance. Why must they always make it a romance?
(Source: anarmydoctor)
