BBC One’s hit Sherlock has already included updates of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, The Dancing Men and The Bruce-Partington Plans into its first series, and the show’s return in January will see adaptations of A Scandal in Bohemia, The Final Problem and The Hound of the Baskervilles.
But there are plenty of other Holmes stories that’d do well in the 21st century. Here are the five cases that we’d like to see the rebooted Great Detective tackle…
The Devil’s Foot
A chance to remove Holmes from his familiar urban landscape and place him on the windswept Cornish coast, The Devil’s Foot not only presents us with a spooky mystery – two people driven insane and one killed, apparently just by looking out of a window – but also a look at Holmes on the back-foot.
Run down by constant work and not enough rest, as well as fighting a losing battle with his addictions, Holmes is at his weakest. He even makes a mistake which puts his own and Watson’s life at risk.
So far we’ve seen Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock to be an unflappable mind, burdened only by the odd craving for a nicotine patch. The Devil’s Foot would be a great opportunity for an exploration of the character’s deeper flaws as he struggles to convalesce and solve a baffling crime.
The Blue Carbuncle
If the BBC should ever be wise enough to make a Sherlock Christmas special – and come on, isn’t that what we all want? – there’s no story better than The Blue Carbuncle.
A festive mystery concerning the theft of the eponymous jewel and a mix-up with a goose, it sends Holmes and Watson careering around a snowy London, interviewing a variety of colourful characters from publicans to goose-salesmen.
Lighter in tone than many Sherlock Holmes stories, and with a heart-warming end that shows Sherlock’s rarely-seen softer side, it’d be the perfect treat for viewers pushing down that third turkey sandwich on a Boxing Day evening.
The Red-headed League
Given his love of the odd red-head reference in Doctor Who, surely it’s only a matter of time until Moffat has a go at a modern interpretation of The Red-headed League; a story in which hundreds of red-headed candidates are auditioned for a highly-paid but menial job within Lord Sugar’s company. No, wait, wrong show. A well-paid but menial job in the Red-headed League.
But why? To say would be spoiling a very good story, but at its heart lies an audacious crime that could be nicely twisted to be an act of revenge on those institutional bogeymen of today, ‘The Banks’.
The premise may sound a little far-fetched for this 21st century incarnation of the Great Detective, but in this age of high-unemployment and economic uncertainty, the sight of a few hundred people crowding outside a building for a fabulously well-paid job isn’t as unbelievable as it may have once have seemed.
The Resident Patient
With a little of Messrs Gatiss and Moffat’s manipulation, The Resident Patient could be made into a fantastic Watson-centric story.
The original tale concerns a doctor named Trevelyan who is asked to set up surgery in the peculiar Mr. Blessington’s house, seeing patients and being on hand to take care of the nervous Blessington. Eventually the doctor finds his ‘resident patient’ has hanged himself. Or has he been murdered?
Martin Freeman’s Dr. Watson, who we saw starting to adjust to civilian life as a GP in the first series, would be the perfect replacement for Trevelyan and would bring a new, more personal angle to the case. The Resident Patient also sees Holmes’ detective skills at their sharpest, as he cracks the case simply by examining some old cigars. No need for an app-packed smartphone this time.
Charles Augustus Milverton
Charles Augustus Milverton is a master blackmailer, extorting vast sums of money from his targets by knowing about their private infidelities and scandals and threatening to release such information. And he’s more than a match for Sherlock Holmes.
The use of technology is a strong theme in Sherlock, and in an age where gossip can be sourced or spread across social networks with the push of a button, Milverton could be made all the more powerful; blackmailing celebrities and politicians with compromising photos, stolen emails or hacked phone calls, publishing them across the web and social media platforms if they refuse to pay up.
How could our tech-using detective possibly stop him? We’re a society addicted to glossy gossip and tabloid tittle-tattle, and with privacy of the famous discussed now more than ever, a 21st century adaptation of Charles Augustus Milverton is just begging to be made.
Which stories would you like to see adapted on Sherlock? Let us know below…
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