Jasmine Sahu is well suited with this new American drama exclusive to Dave.
Lois Cameron explains why this series is much more than your average cosy period drama.
The last episode of this series sees Sherlock and Moriarty attempt to solve the final problem with devastating consequences.
With major cast changes afoot, Jacob Martin ponders whether Being Human can live up to its own scarily high standard.
Continuing with a look at the best crime-fighting characters in television, here are two more British series that have made the jump across the Atlantic.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s much-loved Victorian detective has ditched the Holmes in this latest reinvention by Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the Sherlock to Martin Freeman’s John Watson, but one attired in scarves, coattails and nicotine patches rather than a deerstalker and pipe.
This new series ran for three episodes in the summer of 2010. Its concept offers cerebral crimes, with a dialogue and plot that runs at a breakneck speed. All synapses firing, Sherlock welcomes the news ‘we've got ourselves a serial killer’ with a gleeful ‘I love those, there's always something to look forward to!’ This Sherlock, establishing himself as the world’s only consulting detective, is fully 21st Century literate. Watson, a returned veteran from Afghanistan, blogs about their adventures. Sherlock’s characteristic prickliness, however, remains. ‘Shut up’ he orders in one scene to a silent police man. ‘You were thinking. It’s annoying.’ Like the audience, his ‘best man’ is often ten paces behind, Martin Freeman having relocated to Middle Earth to recuperate. Flat-sharing with the eccentric detective means putting up not only with empty cupboards, but also coming home to find someone’s head in their fridge. The only problem with the series is its brevity. A cliff-hanger ending with his nemesis, a giggly Professor Moriarty, will be continued by a second series this autumn involving some of Holmes’s most famous cases. The first series was warmly received in America.
Recommended Episode: A Study in Pink.
The deductive powers of Alan Davies’ Jonathan Creek come from his shaggy mop of hair, puppy-dog eyes and famous duffle coat, windmill also included. A magician’s assistant, he divides his time between inventing new illusions and solving mysteries.
Jonathan Creek makes the extraordinary ordinary. A magician’s assistant, he rationalises the mysteries of rooms locked from the inside and things that go bump in the night. This detective work requires a new kind of imagination. The programme crosses between the genres of comedy, murder mystery and supernatural thriller, as Creek deconstructs baffling optical illusions. Its third, out of a total four, series, was a little disappointing, veering sharply into extra-terrestrial and supernatural territory. As each episode begins with the haunting strains of Danse Macabre, the will they/won’t they chemistry between Jonathan and his female companion drives the programme. The part of investigative journalist Madeline ‘Maddy’ Magellan was in fact written for actress Caroline Quentin. Jonathan Creek’s transition to America failed after two unsuccessful attempts to rewrite its storylines. Writer David Renwick explains that he abandoned the project when he discovered that American sensibilities ‘could not countenance the idea of an eighty year-old man,’ a character in one of the episodes, ‘being on screen for three minutes.’ Why? ‘The fact that he was even in the show at that age was very damaging to their potential demographic. It's just another world entirely.’
Recommended Episode: Satan’s Chimney.
Check out yesterday's article for Anne's other choices.
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