When did you know you were hooked

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Happy Birthday, Jesskay!

[jesskayding]

Thank you guys. My friends are so nice. It's been getting celebrated everyday since Saturday. I was treated to my favorite coffee shop here in Dayton, Ghostlight coffee & my favorite food, at Jeets Indian food, love it! Been getting gifts, has been great!... Then today I was treated to ribeye steak, with cake & ice cream...

[Carol the Dabbler]

Wow!  Happy belated birthday! 

 

And thanks for the explanation, guys -- it makes perfect sense now!

 

[Slithytove]

I've loved Sherlock Holmes as a character ever since I read the ACD books in the school library. My God, that's fifty years ago...

 

I've read a lot of Holmes stories by other writers (most of them bad) since the original went out of copyright, and seen films of varying quality, but I thought an attempt to modernise the tales would be pretty awful.....I couldn't have been more wrong.

 

As for when I was hooked......Well, the wink after "and the address is 221b Baker Street" was pretty effective!

 

And, for the record, I think Mr Cumberbatch is very beautiful in all his roles, and particularly as himself. Not to mention that amazing voice....

[besleybean]

Hooray.

Somebody who's actually older than me!

[Carol the Dabbler]

We cover quite an age range here!      (And Slithytove isn't the oldest.)

 

[Caya]

More than half a century, if I recall SH/LotR/Zelda Fan's age correctly .

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yup, well over half a century.  (The range, that is, not Zelda's age!)

 

[T.o.b.y]

After having been recently asked again "what is it about you and that television series?", I began to wonder, what indeed. Why did Sherlock, of all things, grip me the way it did and not let go until this day?

 

I don't know. But I've spent so much time lately complaining about all the stuff that bothers me on this show, it's kind of nice to sit back and consider why I like it.

 

The main reason I guess is Sherlock himself. I've always had a thing for Sherlock Holmes. And this version seems to have captured the very possibilities in the original character that appealed the most to me, magnified and expanded them. He's such a wonderful "not-hero", so dark and funny and clever, outrageous and morally murky and deeply eccentric. I love "highly individual" characters. And yet, he's easy to relate to. He's very human, and he does have a great heart, and a passionate side to him, and he's vulnerable and sometimes sad and sometimes hurt and he has things he believes in, like justice (his own sense of it) or honor (okay, when it suits him), and protecting the defenseless. For all his otherworldliness, you can get very close to him. And of course he's drop dead gorgeous and his voice is thrilling.

 

Then, I do like mysteries, only they can't be too scary or too violent or disgusting. And I like character-driven plots, so all this "show about a detective, not a detective show" is right up my street.

 

And the other characters are all interesting, and the various relationships among them are wonderful. The story never seems stale or predictable; I never get the feeling that I've seen it all before, which happens with so many things I otherwise enjoy.

 

Last but not least, there's the love story. I love the love story. I am sick and tired of "boy meets girl and they kiss and then there are some complications and then they reconcile and get married and there's sex somewhere along the way, too" romances. But that doesn't mean I've lost my taste for any kind of romance. I am a romantic. And this one, the Sherlock one, is deeply satisfying for me, somehow. And there's not just one. There's Sherlock and Molly, too, which is a terribly romantic, melancholy little narrative in itself, and there's the thing with Irene (that was amazing), and so on and so forth. Oh, and there's John and Mary, who are complicated and difficult and so F***ed up by now, and I have never seen anything like them before, either...

 

But for all it's originality and cleverness, the show is in no way pretentious. It's made and marketed as entertainment and fun pure and simple, it's not explicitly out to educate or make a statement or be art. It's not exclusive; I maintain that while it's probably more fun if you're fairly intelligent and well educated, there's plenty in it for you if you're not.

 

As a literary adaptation, it is incredible. It takes so many liberties, and yet it's so close to the spirit of the original. The way they use the old text is incredibly clever and very insightful.

 

Ahem. Gushing over. Just needed to say that, somehow. In defense of my obsession. Or whatever.

 

 

[jesskayding]

 But I've spent so much time lately complaining about all the stuff that bothers me on this show, it's kind of nice to sit back and consider why I like it.

 

 

 

 

 

Exactly why this thread came to mind. I really was like man whe have a lot of questions about what we dont understand, wanted to see what we loved.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

I had heard of Sherlock Holmes for quite a number of years.  I could have read The Hound of the Baskervilles back in junior high over 20 years ago for extra credit but didn't.  I watched some cartoon version of Sherlock in high school or university close to 20 years ago.  I saw trailers for the Robert Downey Jr. movies as they came out and trailers for BBC's version at some point around series 2.  I became hooked this summer when I finally decided to watch my first episode of the series (The Blind Banker) on Netflix and 2 days later watched A Study in Pink, followed by a marathon of all 3 seasons the day after that.  And I didn't even think to find Baker Street when I was in London 15 years ago.

[stick]

I wasn't fussed about watching it there had been trailers but I just thought oh another detective show we haven't got enough of those and dismissed it, though the fact it was Moffat and Gatiss behind it did peak my interest but ultimately I wasn't interested enough to make a point to watch it, but the day it aired I turned on my TV and it was on and about 20 minutes into the episode and I thought oh its that Sherlock program and then it just grabbed my attention and I thought it was amazing, watched it again in full the next day.