Ten Facts About Sherlock.

Overview

Sherlock is a British television crime drama that presents a contemporary update of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective stories. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor John Watson.

Storyline

In this modernized version of the Conan Doyle characters, using his detective plots, Sherlock Holmes lives in early 21st century London and acts more cocky towards Scotland Yard’s detective inspector Lestrade because he’s actually less confident. Doctor Watson is now a fairly young veteran of the Afghan war, less adoring and more active.Written by KGF Vissers

The Facts

• Matt Smith auditioned for the role of Doctor Watson before his Doctor Who audition.

• The actual address used for filming the exteriors of 221B Baker Street is 187 North Gower Street, London NW1.

• As in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories, the term “deduction” is misused. Like medical diagnosticians, hunters and yes, detectives, what Holmes actually uses is neither deduction nor induction, but a third form of inference called “abductive reasoning”.

• In the original stories, Dr. Watson has also done military service in Afghanistan.

• In this series, Watson was wounded in the shoulder but has psychosomatic/psychogenic pain in his leg. This is a sly reference to the original stories in which Arthur Conan Doyle was inconsistent about the location of Watson’s war wound.

• The typeface used in the overlays is Johnston Sans, well-known for its use in the London Underground.

• Benedict Cumberbatch was cast after Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss watched his performance in Atonement. They thought he looked like a perfect Holmes.

• During the hiatus between the first and second series, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch were both cast in Peter Jackson’s films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. This time Freeman took the lead as Bilbo, and Cumberbatch provided the voice of the dragon Smaug.

• As part of his preparation after being cast as Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch read every original Conan Doyle story.

• In the summer of 2011 Danny Boyle created a National Theatre production of ‘Frankenstein’ in which Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller played the creator and monster and alternately changed nightly. Both actors then went on to play another Victorian creation Sherlock Holmes, both set in the present day, allbeit opposite side of the Atlantic