Abstract
CBS’s most recent series featuring the Great Detective—Elementary—is renowned for inviting both a public outcry and vehement praise for reimagining several characters in novel ways. Among them is Inspector Tobias Gregson of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories transformed into the fully-fledged character of Captain Tommy Gregson, a police officer who can boast more than the dubious title of being “the smartest of the Scotland Yarders.” The chapter presents him as someone who has managed to accept and integrate the Holmesian vision into everyday police work and has inscribed Holmes himself into the matrix of interpersonal—and familial—relationships.
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Notes
- 1.
The volume referenced here is The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes (London: Penguin, 2009); all page numbers indicated refer to this edition. Conan Doyle attempted to finish his career as a writer of detective fiction in 1893 with the publication of “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” which ends with Sherlock Holmes pulling Professor Moriarty into the Reichenbach Falls with him to what is assumed is their mutual death. Due to pressure from readers, however, Conan Doyle was forced to bring the Great Detective back and the final Holmes story was published in 1927, more than 30 years after “The Adventure of the Final Problem.”
- 2.
Some of the most recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations include Sherlock (BBC, 2010–), which takes place in contemporary London; House, MD, in which the titular character is a diagnostician practising in a New Jersey hospital (FOX, 2004–2012), The Finder (FOX, 2012), taking place in Florida, or the subject of the present chapter, Elementary (CBS, 2012–), which is set in New York.
- 3.
This is a series written by Michelle Birkby, currently containing two instalments: The House on Baker Street (2016) and The Women of Baker Street (2017).
- 4.
The stories of the original canon in which Inspector Gregson appears are as follows: A Study in Scarlet (1887), “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter” (1893), “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge” (1908), and “The Adventure of the Red Circle” (1911).
- 5.
It is not only Baden-Powell who turned to Sherlock Holmes: as Maysaa Jaber explains, during World War II, for instance, Universal Studios created rather propagandistic films featuring Holmes in a modernised setting, battling the Nazis and other contemporary evils, all the while reinforcing an image of tough, patriotic, classic masculinity (Jaber 2015, 167–176).
- 6.
Besides the Granada series, the character of Inspector Gregson also appeared in some other classic and more contemporary adaptations, such as in The Woman in Green (1945), in the British-American animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (1999–2001), and also in Russian adaptations.
- 7.
The series Elementary is not without a Lestrade, however: the British inspector is featured on two occasions, and both times he appears as a not entirely incompetent police officer, but one who is not averse to claiming Holmes’s victories as his own to further his reputation and gain notoriety. Elementary’s Gareth Lestrade, often the source of comic relief, has trouble getting ahead without Holmes’s help. His character can be seen in the episodes “Step Nine” (season 2, episode 1), “The One Percent Solution” (season 2, episode 16), and “Ears to You” (season 2, episode 17).
- 8.
Several examples may be mentioned here, from the film Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), to Andy Lane’s book series Young Sherlock Holmes (2010–, at the time of writing the series contains eight titles), Shane Peacocks’s series The Boy Sherlock Holmes (2007–2012, six instalments) to The Enola Holmes Mysteries (2006–2010, six instalments) by Nancy Springer, all series targeting younger audiences.
- 9.
It is not only Sherlock Holmes who is chronically lonely and almost without any familiar relations: several other detectives of the classic tradition—C. August Dupin, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Father Brown—are without a family for one reason or another, or if they do have a family, like Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, it seems rather dysfunctional.
- 10.
Besides Elementary, a number of recent, Sherlock Holmes-inspired crime series feature a detective who is also an addict: in Sherlock, the detective has recovered from an unspecified drug addiction; in House, MD the titular character is addicted to opioids; in The Finder, the main character suffered traumatic brain injury and has therefore become obsessed with the process of finding.
- 11.
It is both entertaining and worrying to witness that Holmes manages to throw away such barbs even when he is complimenting Watson . In “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier” he notes why Watson is the ideal companion: “A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate” (Doyle 2009, 1000).
- 12.
When we discuss detectives beyond Sherlock Holmes, it is interesting to consider Sherlock’s Sergeant Sally Donovan, who is openly hostile towards Holmes from her first appearance in the series and remains probably the only character who is not convinced of the genius of the Great Detective. While Donovan is generally portrayed as a minor antagonist to Holmes, it is worth noting that outside of the Holmesian universe, she would be the model of the good police officer, attempting to follow regulations and best practices even when her superiors are willing to overlook the rules when it comes to Holmes’s unusual—and not always legal—methods.
- 13.
Snowden , a former contractor for the National Security Agency—since turned hero or traitor, depending on one’s perspective—leaked classified information to the press in June 2013. He has since become the subject of countless narratives from interviews and documentaries to fictional representations, one of them being an Elementary episode entitled “We Are Everyone” (season 2, episode 3), which was originally aired on 3 October 2013, merely a few months after the actual events that inspired the story took place. While the presentation of the fictional whistleblower, Ezra Kleinfelter, is less than favourable, the similarly controversial hacktivist group Everyone (strongly resembling the Anonymous hacker collective) is treated in a different manner: while first they are presented as a group of immature internet trolls (which is, of course, not only a popular view of Anonymous but is also a conscious aspect of their profile), in later episodes, however, their brand of internet-based vigilante justice is embraced by Holmes, who builds a mutually advantageous work relationship with the collective who later on come to his aid several times in the course of the series.
- 14.
The issues highlighted by Black Lives Matter have been, to some extent, approached by several outlets of scripted mainstream television, although not by a multitude of crime series. At the time of writing, some scripted American television shows which dedicated one or more episodes to the issues of Black Lives Matter are as follows: Black-ish (“Hope,” 24 February 2016, ABC), Scandal (“The Lawn Chair,” 5 March 2015, ABC), Orange is The New Black (2013−, Netflix) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (“Moo Moo,” 2 May 2017, FOX).
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Hudácskó, B. (2017). The Case of the Two Gregsons: From A Study in Scarlet to Elementary . In: Krawczyk-Żywko, L. (eds) Victorian Detectives in Contemporary Culture. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69311-8_5
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