In another four weeks, we will find out how the London Olympics compare to the stately and imposing spectacle put out by Beijing four years ago. There is every sign, however, that the London organisers are taking an alternative route. Danny Boyle, director of the opening ceremony, has decided to kick things off with an idealised countryside, complete with 70 sheep, 12 horses, 10 chickens, nine geese and cricket players! Ambition is sporting a very different costume here. As the story on the right shows, a lot of this has to do with the great head-start given by the literature of London, so the city is a global city in a unique way. When generations across the globe have grown up on a diet of Dickens, where?s the need to perform a national epic from scratch? After all, the hosts can presume on our familiarity with so much of their culture and history.
Beijing is also much the poorer in not having a BBC, which has been indefatigable in taking London to the world this year. In India, BBC Entertainment has kept us glutted with Jubilee documentaries, a self-mocking comedy drama about preparing for the Olympics (Twenty Twelve), and a superlative Sherlock, whose second season premieres here at 8pm this evening?it?s been sold in over 180 countries.
Hollywood?s most courtly chronicler Roger Ebert says that he became an Anglophile on those winter nights when he sat curled up in his dad?s big chair, a single lamp creating shadows in the corners of the room, reading Sherlock Holmes stories while the comforting sounds of his parents doing the laundry wafted up from the basement. You may have a similar story. Ebert is by no means an exception. Satyajit Ray read the same stories as a child, and so did his delectable Feluda. Orson Welles called Sherlock ?the world?s most famous man who never was?. Ardent Sherlockians insist he is the most famous of all Britons.
Arthur Conan Doyle was a Scotsman, surgeon, businessman and war correspondent. He played first class cricket. Twice, he even bowled out WG Grace?a Hercules shrouded in white, with the beard of a Goth or a Vandal, whose capture Doyle would versify as a horrible jest, ?that I should serve tosh to the great one, who had broken the hearts of the best?. And 125 years ago, this colourful and energetic fellow published his first Sherlock story. By the time Doyle died in 1930, scores of silent films based on Sherlock had already been made. And most of them had opted for a contemporary setting!
When London last hosted the Olympics in 1948, Basil Rathbone?s Sherlock (1939-1946) ruled the day. His hair was slickly swept back, his bearing was languid and bearing aristocratic. He flew to America, to keep a microfilm from falling into Nazi hands, declaiming that in the days to come, the British and American people for their own safety and the good of all would walk together in majesty and in justice and in peace! Today?s hysteria about whether sequels, prequels, remakes and spin-offs desecrate the original doesn?t then seem very modern, does it? In the case of Sherlock, our mental image of the man definitely owes as much to Rathbone and Jeremy Brett as it does to Doyle. All three were favourite childhood fodder for Benedict Cumberbatch, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss?the actor and creators of BBC?s new Sherlock.
Cumberbatch could be playing Sherlock for another 15 years, so his portrayal may become as definitive as that of Brett or Rathbone. He says he would like to do this. Dr Who, the other BBC show with which Messrs Moffat-Gatiss are associated, shows no sign of wrapping up in its 50th year. And Cumberbatch?s fans are already legion. Moffat notes that he is the only man to play Sherlock Holmes with an even stupider name. Aah, but it is also splendrous. His face has reminded people of otters, mongooses, hammerhead sharks, etc. But its intense angularity, his slashing eyes and abandoned hair convey so much cleverness, imperiousness, presence. The stylish wardrobe helps, a flowing, high-collared overcoat is ever-present and a deerstalker makes an occasional appearance.
His London is also stylish, swerving into dark Victorian alleys and then lightening onto glass-fronted modernisms. One is looking forward to how it will adapt to The Hound of the Baskervilles, Doyle?s alchemical jumble of sinister fog and moor, spectral hound and superstitious hell-fire. His Watson has soft curves and ideals. Sherlock warns him, ?Don?t make people into heroes, John. Heroes don?t exist. And if they did, I wouldn?t be one of them.? But this Watson?s blog will likely continue in a romantic vein, much tweeted and trending. His Moriarty is campy but still offers a suitably tough challenge to Sherlock: ?Why are you doing this? I like to see you dance.? Will Moriarty die? Will Sherlock? What about The Woman? Wait and watch. London is chock-a-block with excitements these days.
There is of course an elephant in the room, Robert Downey Jr?s Sherlock. He promised and delivered ?fighting skills as lethal as his legendary intellect?. Where Cumberbatch?s character is trying to give up smoking and wearing a nicotine patch, Downey?s supplements Sherlock?s canonical cocaine habit with more exotic ones as well as alcohol. Ebert moans, ?He trashes his rooms like a drunken undergraduate; they lack only empty pizza boxes. This will not do. My Sherlock is above all fastidious.? Through DNA samples, GPS hunts, CCTV spying, text messages, web searches and CSI forensics, Cumberbatch somehow remains an archetypical Sherlock. Traditional, but in posthuman fashion. Like Bones or Sheldon.