promisingtheskies:

not going to reblog the interview because i don’t want benedict cumberbatch’s face on my blog. but anyway i just read this interview with him where the writer referred to elementary as a “copycat holmes drama.”

oh my god you people know the first sherlock holmes book was written in 1887 right

elementary is not an imitation of sherlock. they are both based on the same texts. that’s all. shut up everybody.

What do you make of the new US modern Sherlock Holmes adaptation, Elementary?

Jonny [Lee Miller] asked me if I was all right with him doing it. I said, “What are the similarities?” And he went, “Well it’s modern…” I went, “Oh.” Then he said, “Lucy Liu’s going to play Joan Watson…” And I went, “Oh.” I got hold of the pilot script just to check it out. I don’t know, we’ll see. I think there’s room for us both to coexist. I don’t feel threatened by it and I wish him the best, which is as diplomatic as I can be.

It’s a strange position to be in…

It’s very odd. I did say, “Well, I’d prefer you didn’t do it but you’ve got a kid to feed, a nice house in LA and a wife to keep in good clothes.” When you get used to a certain standard of living and they waft a pay cheque at you, what are you going to do? I think Jonny was like, “Mate, I’ve got the f*cking mountain to climb here [to reach the acclaim of Sherlock], you’ve got nothing to fear.” I wish him the best of luck, but I’m a bit cynical about why they’ve chosen to do it and why they cast him.

everything about this enrages me.

YOU DON’T FUCKING OWN SHERLOCK HOLMES. there have been so many adaptations of the texts over these past ONE HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE YEARS. Sherlock is not fucking unique and neither is elementary.

i’m sure sherlock is good. i’ve never watched it, and have no plan to do so. but i’m also sure elementary will be good. just like the mentalist (which came out ages before sherlock) and the great mouse detective and all the various other adaptations.

imagine if someone said this about a shakespeare story. granted, shakespeare’s works are much older and have been done much more. but like. if somebody tried to stake a claim on hamlet, saying “my adaptation of hamlet is the only one worth producing, nobody else gets to mess with it.” if that happened WE WOULD LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE THE LION KING DIDN’T EXIST. this is not a thing that anybody should be okay with. the lion king is a vital part of our pop culture, and if somebody long ago had said “nobody can touch hamlet” then it never would have happened. if somebody said “nobody can touch romeo and juliet” we wouldn’t have the dicaprio film, we wouldn’t have west side story, we wouldn’t have high school musical (okay, many people might be alright with this one. it’s just an example, people!)

when texts go into the public domain (70 years after the author’s death), this is what happens. everybody adapts them. and that’s a good thing. it’s a great thing. yes of course, the creation of new material is dreadfully important. but so is the adaptation of old material. it happens in theatre all the time. benedict cumberbatch should know this - he’s a theatre actor. he and jonny lee miller did frankenstein together. which is of course an adaptation of a public domain text.

plus, above all they need to consider that the audiences are vastly different. sherlock is a bbc production, with a unique fanbase. sherlock produces three episodes every, what, year and a half? elementary will be run weekly on american primetime - not to say it won’t also develop its own following, but it’s not going to be the type of fans who do deep analysis like sherlock fans do. it’s an entirely different creature.

i’m sorry. this is a really stupid thing to rant about. it’s a stupid thing to even get worked up over! but it really made me mad.