Sherlock For Millennials

Sherlock: The Essential Arthur Conan Doyle Adventures – Selected and Introduced by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat (Pegasus Crime)

For an entire generation Sherlock Holmes never existed outside of Benedict Cumberbatch and Netflix. The great portrayals by Basil Rathbone and the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle generated nary a thought from the millennial generation that latched onto the modern day incarnation brought to the small screen by the BBC.

Now the show’s producers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat have made a run at trying to breathe life into Doyle’s classic renderings of Sherlock Holmes by collecting their favorite Sherlockian tales between the covers of the new book, Sherlock: The Essential Arthur Conan Doyle. The pair billed the book as their favorite selections with a brief introduction to each of the choices. Brief being the optimum word here with each treated with a single line synopsis of what follows.

This was a missed opportunity for the duo to offer up deeper insight into why they made the selection, along with if/how it impacted on their rendering of Holmes. This may struck some as just another opportunity to cash in on Doyle’s creation.

With so many writers/publishers trying to latch onto Holmes and Doyle’s other characters, there is at least a purity to Gatiss and Moffat’s version; given their brilliant and varied selctions. As a fan of Sherlock Holmes in the original written form and as the father of a millennial how is a diehard fan of the TV show, it gives me the opportunity to share Doyle’s masterful storytelling with my son and give him of dose of Homes in the purist form.