As Sherlock returns to our screens, here are 22 curious things you might not have known about the BBC series:
1. It all began with a speech
In 2006, well-known Holmes enthusiast Mark Gatiss was asked to address the Sherlock Holmes Society's annual dinner at the Houses of Parliament. Gatiss, who brought along Steven Moffat as his guest, told the audience about a meeting at the BBC to discuss the possibility of resurrecting Arthur Conan Doyle's creation for a Christmas special. He and the Corporation failed to reach an agreement, but as he "raced round the endless circular corridors, frothing at the mouth at what these philistines might be planning", Gatiss bumped into John Simpson, recently returned from Kabul. “As he passed me,” Gatiss explained, “I touched him on the arm and whispered: ‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive’.” This gave him the seed of an idea, which he and Moffat subsequently grew into a modern-day Sherlock: "A young army doctor, wounded in Afghanistan finds himself alone and friendless in London," he teased the group. "Short of cash, he bumps into an old medical acquaintance who tells him he knows of someone looking for a flatmate. This bloke’s alright but a little odd..." Gatiss was effectively pitching his and Moffat’s Sherlock to the toughest crowd imaginable, and they approved.
2. There is no abandoned tube station at Sumatra Road
The location chosen for the bomb-laden tube carriage meant to blow up Parliament in the season three opener The Empty Hearse is actually in West Hampstead, and isn't the site of a half-finished London Underground station (although the Bull & Bush abandoned station is nearby). It's nowhere near Westminster, but was chosen by Gatiss as a sly reference to The Giant Rat of Sumatra, a Holmes adventure mentioned (but never expanded upon) in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. Sherlock's production team couldn't get hold of a real carriage, so mocked up their own District Line replica - despite exterior shots clearly showing a Jubilee Line train. Tube-loving viewers have also been quick to point out other inaccuracies.
3. Not everybody appreciated Irene Adler’s nudity
The BBC reportedly received over 100 complaints about actress Lara Pulver’s portrayal of Holmes’s female sparring partner as an upmarket dominatrix who used pre-watershed seminudity to bewitch the detective in A Scandal in Belgravia. But some Sherlock purists objected on different grounds. Irene Adler as conceived by Conan Doyle in A Scandal in Bohemia, it was argued in blog after blog, was a formidable woman of honour, who would never allow herself to become a pawn of Moriarty, or to fall for Holmes after showing him her breasts. Steven Moffat disagreed with the feminists. "In the original,” he told The Guardian, “Irene Adler's victory over Sherlock Holmes was to move house and run away with her husband. That's not a feminist victory."
4. Holmes and Watson are good enough to eat
Speedy’s Cafe, the sandwich emporium frequented by Holmes and Watson in the series, is a real café on Gower Street, near Euston – the BBC’s stand-in for 221b Baker Street. (In the Sherlock pilot it was run by Una Stubbs’s character and named Mrs Hudson’s Snax n' Sarnies, but that idea was swiftly dropped.) The fans who flock there from all over the world can now enjoy specially created Sherlock-themed snacks, specifically the Sherlock wrap (chicken, bacon, cheddar cheese, lettuce, peppers, red onion, cucumber, chilli sauce – all "wrapped up as tightly as Sherlock’s personality") or the Watson Wrap (roasted vegetables, spinach, tomatoes, spring onion, Brie, sour cream – "safe, warm, and comforting, like his personality").
5. Despite China’s best efforts, Sherlock isn’t gay
As amply demonstrated by the kisses in season three’s first episode, The Empty Hearse, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have always enjoyed flirting with the ambiguity of Sherlock’s sexuality. "Everyone recruited him to their perspective, their interpretation," Benedict Cumberbatch once said when asked about Holmes’s sex life. "I’ve had asexuals come up to me and thank me for representing asexuals." But they’re mistaken, according to Moffat: "There's no indication in the original stories that [Holmes] was asexual or gay," he told The Guardian. None of which has stopped millions of Chinese fans from adopting Sherlock as a gay icon, with a vast archive of literature dedicated to his romantic exploits with Watson. There’s a 39-chapter romance novel; a much-viewed video super-cut of Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (or ‘Curly Fu’ and ‘Peanut’, to give them their Chinese nicknames) exchanging longing looks set to slushy music; plus, of course, the inevitable S&M scenarios. All of which may seem like fairly standard fan-fiction fare – until you remember that in China, writing what the authorities consider filth is a crime punishable with a lengthy jail term.
6. Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t play the violin quite as well as Sherlock
In Arthur Conan Doyle’s story The Cardboard Box, it transpires that Sherlock Holmes owns and plays a violin made by Antonio Stradivarius himself. The Sherlock production team, however, uses a different violin for each series (series three’s is a £1,200 Chinese-made Con Fuoco), all on loan from Cardiff Violins. (The shop’s website contains a sweet testimonial from a ‘Mr John H Watson’, thanking the staff for being ‘extremely patient’ with his friend: ‘He would thank you himself; only, well Sherlock doesn’t really do that sort of thing ...’) For season two’s on-screen violin scenes, Cumberbatch was taught how to play and ‘violin act’ by Eos Chater, a member of the classical group Bond. Although the actor played live on set, the playing heard on the soundtrack is by Chater. "Benedict had a week, and made a surprisingly good sound," she wrote of the experience on her blog. "I have no doubt he would be a good violinist if he had the inclination."
7. Yet his pen-catching skills are beyond reproach
As amply demonstrated by the kisses in season three’s first episode, The Empty Hearse, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have always enjoyed flirting with the ambiguity of Sherlock’s sexuality. "Everyone recruited him to their perspective, their interpretation," Benedict Cumberbatch once said when asked about Holmes’s sex life. "I’ve had asexuals come up to me and thank me for representing asexuals." But they’re mistaken, according to Moffat: "There's no indication in the original stories that [Holmes] was asexual or gay," he told The Guardian. None of which has stopped millions of Chinese fans from adopting Sherlock as a gay icon, with a vast archive of literature dedicated to his romantic exploits with Watson. There’s a 39-chapter romance novel; a much-viewed video super-cut of Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (or ‘Curly Fu’ and ‘Peanut’, to give them their Chinese nicknames) exchanging longing looks set to slushy music; plus, of course, the inevitable S&M scenarios. All of which may seem like fairly standard fan-fiction fare – until you remember that in China, writing what the authorities consider filth is a crime punishable with a lengthy jail term.
6. Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t play the violin quite as well as Sherlock
In Arthur Conan Doyle’s story The Cardboard Box, it transpires that Sherlock Holmes owns and plays a violin made by Antonio Stradivarius himself. The Sherlock production team, however, uses a different violin for each series (series three’s is a £1,200 Chinese-made Con Fuoco), all on loan from Cardiff Violins. (The shop’s website contains a sweet testimonial from a ‘Mr John H Watson’, thanking the staff for being ‘extremely patient’ with his friend: ‘He would thank you himself; only, well Sherlock doesn’t really do that sort of thing ...’) For season two’s on-screen violin scenes, Cumberbatch was taught how to play and ‘violin act’ by Eos Chater, a member of the classical group Bond. Although the actor played live on set, the playing heard on the soundtrack is by Chater. "Benedict had a week, and made a surprisingly good sound," she wrote of the experience on her blog. "I have no doubt he would be a good violinist if he had the inclination."
7. Yet his pen-catching skills are beyond reproach
A scene in The Blind Banker shows John throwing a pen to Sherlock, who catches it without even looking at it. Cumberbatch made the catch on the first take (using a mirror so he could see it coming), but the cameraman was too slow and missed it. He got it again on the third.
8. China can’t understand why Sherlock takes so long to make
During David Cameron’s official visit to China in December 2013, the Prime Minister allowed Chinese citizens to ask him questions through Sina Weibo, the country’s Twitter-like social network. Among queries about Larry the Downing Street cat, Tom Daley, Visa application forms and Wendi Deng, by far the most popular request was: “Please urge Sherlock crew to be quick! They have had us waiting for two years for every season!” Cameron diplomatically pointed out that “I can’t tell them what to do, as it’s an independent company”, before urging fans to pass the time by reading Conan Doyle’s stories.
9. Sherlock’s staircase would please purists
In Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock asks Watson how many steps lead up to their quarters at 221b Baker Street. Watson hasn't a clue. “I know there are 17 steps, because I have both seen and observed,” Holmes tells him. Because Sherlock fans are similarly observant, there are 17 steps leading to the first floor of the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and another 17 between the hall and front room on the Cardiff set of Sherlock.
10. In Japan, he’s a comic book hero
Japan has a long tradition of Sherlock-influenced, copyright-avoiding manga or anime: Young Miss Holmes, a manga comic about Sherlock’s niece; Detective Hound, a canine anime series co-created by Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki; the unrelated Detective Dog Sherdock, a comic in which the sleuth is reincarnated as a dog; and the Arthur Conan Doyle-inspired boy crime-solver Detective Conan, whose latest animated adventure trounced Keanu Reeves’s 47 Ronin at the Japanese box-office. But the BBC series recently received the ultimate accolade: completely faithful (ie, free of tentacled creatures and and robots) comic-book adaptations of the episodes A Study in Pink and The Blind Banker in Young Ace magazine. As the above rendering proves, Cumberbatch’s gamine features make him the perfect manga hero.
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