But for me season 1 really was so bad in that regard that I need something substantial to forget about it.
Also, calling Mary in S3 "well-written" is a biiit of a stretch for me, not because of her character but because I consider season 3 to be rather poor compared to the first two - especially episode 1. She is alright, and obviously if you compare her to any female character in the first two seasons she looks outstanding, but that's due to a lack of any significant rivalry.
edited 11th Jan '16 9:41:23 AM by Julep
Everyone who brings up Dr. Who is a discussion about sexism in Sherlock is someone I usually stop listing to. Because it frankly doesn't matter. Sherlock is, like every TV show, the product of a group of people, not just one person. And bringing up Dr. Who reveals a vendetta again Moffat instead of an issue with the show.
And naturally the main antagonist, the head detective and the brother in Sherlock are all male too, because that happened to have been their gender in canon.
Give me a version of Mrs. Hudson, which is portrayed as a recurring character with a proper backstory and opinions.
Give me a version of Mary who is allowed to stick around after the marriage and becomes an important part of the plot rather than a footnote.
You can't? Well, there you have it. Because Sherlock is the only adaptation which actually gives a damn about those characters.
Yes, Sherlock botched Irene Adler. But the only other interesting female in canon is Violet Hunter. If you keep that in mind, it is kind of impressive that Sherlock managed to create a number of distinctive females about the next to nothing canon provides. Even Janine developed from a "girl Holmes once used for a case to Watson's disgust" to a proper character.
edited 11th Jan '16 9:44:11 AM by Swanpride
I specifically mentioned Who to explain that to me, if Sherlock has flaws, they must be addressed in Sherlock. So I decided not to include Who in any analysis regarding Sherlock. My point actually was that you shouldn't compare them here, so I don't quite get your point.
Give me a version of Mrs. Hudson, which is portrayed as a recurring character with a proper backstory and opinions.
Give me a version of Mary who is allowed to stick around after the marriage and becomes an important part of the plot rather than a footnote.
You can't? Well, there you have it. Because Sherlock is the only adaptation which actually gives a damn about those characters.
Yes, Sherlock botched Irene Adler. But the only other interesting female in canon is Violet Hunter. If you keep that in mind, it is kind of impressive that Sherlock managed to create a number of distinctive females about the next to nothing canon provides. Even Janine developed from a "girl Holmes once used for a case to Watson's disgust" to a proper character.
So Sherlock is somewhat progressive if you compare it to shows that aired in the sixties and the seventies. That's not exactly groundbreaking. Also, in season 1, most of the "female cast" that was expanded in the show came out more as a regression than anything.
I mean, I'm not an English native, so before Sherlock, there were basically Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing - and Robert Downey Jr but that was a very short time before. I wasn't flooded with adaptations all over my life because Holmes is part of my nation's cultural history. So I'd rather compare it with other shows and crime stories that aired more or less at the same time - unluckily for Sherlock, said shows were Forbrydelsen and Spiral.
My thoughts are that if you want to make a story with strong focus on women (which every body should) then you shouldn't do a non genderbent strait adaption of Sherlock Holmes.
Really, why hasn't there been adaptation of Sherlock Holmes where it's from Mrs Hudson's prrspective? The drug addict you let your upstairs to is an international celebrity, subject of frequent assassination attempts, and plays the violin at odd hours.
Despite the unfavourable premise, Sherlock has been making progress. Series three was a lot more enjoyable to me for it's greater awareness of women.
I think there actually was a Mrs Hudson version in development at one point.
And the thought behind Sherlock was always to make a modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. Nothing more, nothing less, and there is really nothing wrong about it. We won't reach gender equality in the media by having a certain number of females in each TV show...there will always be some which are more male heavy. The problem is not that those more male heavy shows exists, the problem is that there are not enough female heavy shows to balance them out, and that often shows are male heavy even though they don't have to be. Sherlock has a very good reason for its mostly male cast, and deciding against gender-bending the characters is not a black mark against it.
There is nothing modern about making every single female character a walking cliché as it was the case in season 1. I honestly think the series would have been better without them back then - and it still was kinda true in season 2.
Again, I don't want focus on female characters, I just want some well-rounded ones, like Mary was in season 3. To balance out with all the awfully-written ones the show had.
Of all the characters that could be gender flipped Lestrade would probably be the easiest actually, there's no reason for the resident copper to be a man.
Though perhaps this discussion should shift on over to the appropriate topic in OTC? It's a more appropriate place and I'd be nice to see some people from this area of the forum come visit.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI would agree with that statement, but only for Mary. I still have issues with Molly, as for Mrs Hudson, honestly I don't know what to think of her. On one hand she is well-played and funny, and her role got expanded upon compared to the books. On the other hand, she is overall irrelevant to the story except when she gets distressed, so if there was no original material to compare her to, she would be rather generic - she doesn't get an outstanding "servant role", such as Batman's Alfred or Varrick's Zhu Li.
Mycroft could be genderflipped without any Unfortunate Implications. It would be some brother-sister asymetrical rivalry, which...how common are older sister/younger brother siblings without the sister acting as a surrogate mother in fiction? And I mean adult siblings, because I suppose it is common in family settings with multiple kids.
That's a really interesting idea.
Lestrade poses problems for the reason noted.
I think Watson works pretty well too, especially because it's not uncommon for The Watson to be female and you could pretty easily Gender Flip him/her.
Was also thinking about Moriarty and Moran. Something I mentioned recently in the Complete Monster thread is that the guy Moriarty is based on, Adam Worth, never used violence and was an all around Noble Demon. And although lots of adapations (including Sherlock) have super-evil Moriarties, there's also been a fair amount of somewhat sympathetic Moriarties.
And so I was thinking both that it would be cool for an adaptation to go in that direction- maybe have Moriarty as like Xanatos.
But it also struck me that the presentation of Irene Adler as an internationally infamous Classy Cat-Burglar is actually a close Gender Flip to what Adam Worth was actually like.
Ooh, genderflipped Mycroft would be interesting.
Also, I'm still excited to see if Sherlock is going to follow up on Sherrinford, the oldest of the three Holmes brothers whom Mycroft name dropped in series 3. All that is mentioned or him in the canon is that he's the smartest and oldest of the three of them.
Also I would like for Harri to turn up somewhen. She's probably only second to John in terms of the multimedia tie ins for the show, talking more than Sherlock or even Mrs Hudson. But she's never appeared on screen, not even at her brother's wedding!
Was there a reason for that? Like, she had gone into alcohol rehab or was only just recovering and couldn't risk being in a room full of wine and champagne?
I got the idea somehow that the next season was going to air later this year, but I just learned they aren't even shooting until next year.
I use Videostream in Chrome to stream local videos to my TV, and somehow they have stats on what's being watched on their app even though it's reading local files (probably has something to do with that port it wanted to open). Tonight, the Sherlock special popped up on the slideshow of what they recommend, with the tagline "Apparently one episode a year is all we deserve."
Fresh-eyed movie blogHuh? I thought that they would start shooting this year, as soon as BC is done with Dr. Strange. After all, Marvel moved the shooting schedule for the movie around to fit into his busy schedule, not the other way around. Are you sure that you didn't read an article from last year which said "next year"?
According to The Other Wiki:
Okay, shooting in spring 2016 is shooting this year. I can't recall now if the article I read said "next year" and was written in 2015 or if it actually said shooting a year after the special aired.
Edit: From the article I read: ""Sherlock: The Abominable Bride" will air on Jan. 1, 2016, on PBS and BBC. "Sherlock" season 4 is due to be filmed next year and will air later next year."
edited 13th Jan '16 7:33:08 AM by TParadox
Fresh-eyed movie blog

Sherlock stars a man who's recently become one of the most in-demand film stars in the western world. He's about to lead a goddamn Marvel franchise.
I'm not saying Doctor Who excuses Sherlock's flaws, I'm saying that if Sherlock hasn't entirely changed for the better yet it's probably because they haven't been able to make it for the past two years, and that if what Moffat's actually been able to do in that time is any indication we probably don't have to worry about Sherlock lacking a strong female presence going forward.
(I mean never mind how well written Mary was last series, you would think that in and of itself would be proof that the show's gonna improve going forward, but whatever.)
edited 11th Jan '16 8:55:16 AM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.