Sherlock Holmes Expert Speaks

Roger Johnson

Sherlock Holmes has endured the test of time, with the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet being published in 1887, meaning that Holmes has remained a figure in popular culture for over a hundred and twenty years. Something I’m sure Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, could never have deduced.

But as Holmes has traveled through the years being an expert in logical thought and the deductive method, so too have people become an expert at Sherlock Holmes, including gentleman like Roger Johnson, who make knowing all there is to know about Sherlock Holmes seem ‘elementary’ at best.

Recently Mr. Johnson was interviewed by the Brentwood Gazette, the highlights of which are below:

On the current number of Sherlock Holmes tales available today despite there only being sixty Holmes adventures written by Conan Doyle himself:

“The quantity (of Holmes stories) is overwhelming. I don’t try these days to keep up with it. There is a huge amount of drek out there which is as easily available as the good stuff, sometimes more so.”

Johnson was also invited to the set of the current BBC production Sherlock, which returns to BBC One on New Year’s Day:

“We were outside 221B Baker Street which isn’t in Baker Street at all.

“Mark Gatiss (series producer and writer) explained it would be impossible to film in Baker Street. For one thing it’s too busy. For another, you’ve got all these businesses using the name of Sherlock Holmes everywhere.

We met with cast and crew which was very interesting indeed. We were able to watch the film as it was happening and on the monitor.

We’d already met Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes), and Mark we’d known for a few years.”

In fact, Johnson may have been deducting a new Sherlock Holmes production long before the rest of us had any idea such a project existed:

“In 2005, the guest of honour at the Sherlock Holmes Society’s Annual Dinner was Stephen Fry, and possibly the best we’ve ever had and the only one I can remember getting a standing ovation. Steven brought as his guest, Mark Gatiss, and afterwards Mark said to our chairman “can I come back next year?”

At the dinner in 2006, he brought Steven Moffatt and he told us of the idea that he and Stephen had for a series of Sherlock Holmes films set in the present day. They had worked all this out whilst travelling on the train between Cardiff and London for Doctor Who.

We had an idea that these two guys knew what they were doing, We had an idea it would be in safe hands.”

On what does the Holmes expert think of the modern day take on the world’s greatest detective:

“I love it, I think it’s brilliant. We were all curious as to how it would work and I know people who don’t like it at all, but Steven and Mark have given us Holmes and Watson as they would be if Arthur Conan Doyle had been writing today.

Benedict Cumberbatch has got the same sort of quality that Jeremy Brett brought to his early performances (in the 1980s Granada series) where you think ‘this isn’t Sherlock Holmes’ but then you think ‘hang on, yes it is, that is out of Conan Doyle.”

Of course when something endures for well over a hundred years, you ask the expert why he thinks people are still reading and watching Holmes so long after his first appearance:

“I think it’s partly because Sherlock Holmes is the iconic detective. Even attributes that don’t originate from the stories, like the deerstalker hat – people see a deerstalker hat they think Sherlock Holmes, they think detective.

There’s also the fact the Sherlock Holmes stories are very unusual among Victorian literature, they’re still read for pleasure, not because people have to read them, but people simply want to read them.

They’re just damn good stories.”

The rest of the interview with Roger Johnson can be read here.

Sherlock returns on New Year’s Day at 8:10 PM.

(Via Brentwood Gazette)