On a more amusing note...

[darkemeralds]

The newspaper article briefly on screen in the opening moments of Sherlock 2.3 is hilarious. Bad props! Bad!

Shelock Holmes of Baker Street has been investigating the art crime simply as a hobby, and yet he was able to follow the trail that lead him to the famous work - a trail that Scotland Yard missed completely. Sherlock has gained a cult following following the publication of his website The Science of Deduction, but the number of hits...

The same crime correspondent, Janette Owens, wrote the next masterpiece, too:

Sherlock Holmes was last night being hailed a hero yet again for masterminding the daring escape of the kidnapped man. Scotland Yard had to secretly bring in their special weapon (in the form of Mr Holmes) yet again. The case has drawn a huge amount of attention as the nation became divided about the outcome of the kidnapping. Bankers are certainly not the nations sweethearts any-more, but Mr Holmes certainly seems to be.

LOL. I guess for something that only the most "focused fan" is going to notice, there's not much need for a sense of authenticity.

There's a mention of Sherlock finding the banker's empty briefcase and clothes, and then, in a nice bit of nearly imperceptible foreshadowing, these faint (and still laughably non-journalistic) words fly past:

In this most remarkable case, it was revealed by Scotland Yard that the case was planted by Mr Holmes himself as part of his grand scheme to discover where the man was being held. Incredibly, the whole case bore strange similarities to the Reichenbach [...] which made Sherlock Holmes a household name.

There's an ad below that totally non-editorial article for 0% APR. LOL.

And oh, this is bad: Janette Owens next writes In a twist worthy of a Conan Doyle novella, Mr Sherlock Holmes yesterday was revealed to be an expert witness at the trial of 'Jim' Moriarty. She says the trail has all the elements of a blockbuster film: The royal family, Scotland yard, the world of finance and greed, the 'underclass' of prisoners out to reek revenge as they enjoy their own fifteen minutes of freedom.

*eyeroll* Revenge doesn't reek. It's sweet, right?

Other notes:

"Henry Fishguard never committed suicide. Bow Street Runners. Missed everything." I can't find that there's a historical Henry Fishguard with or without an unsolved crime, but the line is another interesting little bit of foreshadowing.

Moriarty is wonderfully, engagingly creepy and weird, isn't he? I like his pearl-grey suit.



Okay, back to re-re-re-watching the ep.

Also just-showered, wet-hair John is really pretty adorable. And I love how many bikes are parked outside the Diogenes Club. Hah. As if.

Comments

[donutsweeper]

Okay, interesting. Obviously it's a reference to Sir Henry Fielding and his Bow Street Runners (the sort of front runner to Robert Peel and his "Peelers" or "Bobbies" aka modern police force)

[darkemeralds]

Yeah, the reference to the Runners (and the dusty old book) suggested a historical unsolved case.

There's a lot of hanging, falling, dropping and ropes in that scene, between the intercuts of everyone dropping cups of tea, the prison warden recommending "bringing back the rope", and Sherlock's hanged mannequin.

I'm having fun dissecting the episode now that I've absorbed the big plot elements.

[donutsweeper]

There's a set of historical mysteries based around Fielding and his Runners, very well done so I may have squeed a bit at the idea of him mentioned like this :)

oh and I forgot to mention- Wet haired John was utterly 100% adorables.

[darkemeralds]

Whoa, wait--the same Henry Fielding who was also a novelist in his own right? Cool!

[donutsweeper]

They're actually about his brother, John, the Blind Beak of Bow Street. The series starts with "Blind Justice" and the author is Bruce Alexander. Very nicely detailed for historical accuracy (as far as I could tell, anyway) Since wiki should be dark soon I'll link you elsewhere to read a bit about the books
http://www.goodreads.com/series/41340-sir-john-fielding
http://www.librarything.com/author/alexanderbruce

[darkemeralds]

Thanks for the links.

I see that the last of the series was published posthumously, and from reviews it looks like he went out on a high note. It sounds like a really engaging mystery series.

[donutsweeper]

I've given the series to a few bibliophile friends (I had standing requests at a local used mystery book store for copies for a while). If you ever read them, I'd love to chat about them with you.

[scribblemoose]

Actually (and I'm ashamed to admit it, as a Brit) - for that particular newspaper the standard of journalism portrayed is spot on. It's notoriously bad!

[cat63]

Yes. I read the extracts and couldn't see what the problem was - Uk tabloids are just like that :)

[legionseagle]

You just can't get the subs these days...

Nice icon, btw.

[cat63]

I think these days, newspaper folk think subs are those long sarnies....

I had to double-check which icon I was usingm, as the Doctor Who one is usually the only one which gets commented on :) Thanks for the kind words about this one - I took the picture myself and it was the first one I took that I was really pleased with :)

[(Anonymous)]

The detailed ones I paused and read all seemed to be from the Guardian--at least, there was one glimpse of the Guardian's logo or something a lot like it. But yeah, one would expect the tabloids to be pretty lax in the journalistic writing department.

[darkemeralds]

Um, that was me.

[legionseagle]

I tried to post this earlier but it seems not to have got through.

Why the surprise about the bicycles?

[cat63]

The sort of person likely to be a member at the Diogenes club isn't likely to be going there by bike, I'd think. Even though it is iften the quickest way to get about in Central London.

[legionseagle]

Golly, a club which would blackball David Cameron*, Nick Clegg and Boris Johnson? I bet the waiting list is longer than MCC's!




*Specific photo selected because I think the headline's funny.

[cat63]

I'm not sure they'd actually blackball people for being cyclists, but it seems to me that the sort of stuffy misanthrope who'd want to go there probably wouldn't be terribly keen on fresh air and exercise. I could be wrong, but somehow I can't picture Mycroft pedalling blithely down Whitehall. Mind you, if he did, he'd somehow make it seem like the most natural thing in the world :)

[darkemeralds]

Mycroft on a bike is a lovely image, isn't it?

[cat63]

It is, rather. With his bowler hat on and a brolly under his arm, of course :)

[darkemeralds]

Well, they'd certainly have protected valet bike parking, in any case!

[darkemeralds]

Because the actual club members we see are pushing alarm buttons with their canes or sending slithery chauffeur-driven cars to pick up innocent ATM users.

Though I can easily envision Mycroft on a bike. A Pashley Roadster, of course.

[tehomet]

:D

I have to say I've seen worse in actual newspapers. I remember reading in a Dublin daily about the 'graf dangr' some criminal or other posed to the women of Ireland. :)

[legionseagle]

Those German aristos, eh?

[darkemeralds]

Graf dangr? Really?

It wasn't so much the misspellings and typos as the actual writing in these examples that struck me as hilarious. I'd like to think that even the shoddy standards of today's tabloids wouldn't let a sentence like "has gained a cult following following the publication of his website" into print.

Perhaps I'm naive. I probably am. :D

[cat63]

Alas, that's practically high art by tabloid standards :)

[shezan]

Nah. Tabloids speak their own language, but they're made by extremely talented people.