Oh, Sherlock Holmes. I never really liked you.

You are an Edwardian Tory fantasy of upper class superiority and that doesn’t sit well with me.

You expect me to believe that this meddling gentleman is somehow vastly superior to professional police officers and scientists who; like good plebeians; come cap-in-hand to one of their betters to ask for help with something that is clearly above their working class heads? Like orphans asking for more gruel.

You never actually did anything except randomly deign to help out the lower orders while simultaneously patronising them.

And I can only assume the former Mrs Madonna agrees with me. Which is why the recent movie played with this idea by making Sherlock unbelievably spoilt… They looked at the silly upper class from below… And found it funny and spoilt.

So I very much approved of the film. Guy Ritchie had given London a superhero to be proud of, something a city of its size and standing has in shockingly short supply. (Bond was technically Scottish and The Avengers are shit.)

After the film I didn’t really think there was anything more to say about Mr Holmes… And then I watched this mini-series. It has got to be one of the best pieces of drama the BBC has produced in twenty years.

The series covers a number of things that you can only do if you reboot Holmes as a modern concept.

• Sherlock Holmes is obviously homosexual. Even in the original books, living a ‘bachelor’ lifestyle with another man who follows him around everywhere. Please. In the modern setting, it’s hilarious to see everyone confusing Holmes and Watson in completely the reverse way: They all think they’re a couple. Except -just like in the books- Watson isn’t gay.
• Sherlock Holmes is a sociopath. In the textbook definition of the term, where he doesn’t see humans at all but a collection of clues and signifiers. You can’t notice a stain on someone’s cuff if you look at them as a person -rather than a slab of vastly inferior meat.
• Sociopathology is a mental illness. And here is where the series works as a modern retelling. Instead of some pointless Edwardian dandy wandering around the Yorkshire Moors and staying on country estates, you have someone genuinely struggling to deal with a mental illness. It’s painfully lonely to be so much smarter than everyone else due to your brain not being wired for emotional connection. The scenes where he is rude and angry are very touching because it is just him trying to make a human connection… Which you will appreciate if you have even a second’s experience with the mental health profession. Solving crimes is his therapy… It’s the only thing that can occupy enough of his mind to make the rest of his life resemble normality. Deduction becomes almost an OCD tick. He has to do it. You wouldn’t like him when he’s bored.

Other things that update unbelievably well: He uses nicotine patches rather than pipes when trying to think through a puzzle. So a ‘two pipe problem’ becomes a ‘three patch problem’. It’s minor but it’s funny. And you have to address the pipe thing if you do a modern retelling because it -along with the mercifully absent stupid hat- is fairly iconic.

Of course, the thing about having a superhero with a mental illness as the title character is that its a very unapproachable person from the audience’s point of view. So the producers have made Watson a bit more of an ‘every man’ to allow the audience easier entry into the Sherlock’s world. And when casting a professional everyman, who else would you turn to but professional everyman, Martin Freeman? It’s a good move. He’s awesome.

The series also makes intelligent use of smart phones. It angers me to see some many Blackberrys, iPhones and Nokia E72s in TV dramas and people not using them to help their cause -either by looking things up or checking email or whatever.

Not Holmes. He’s king of the blackberry. Watch all the clips in the play list I put together (runs for about six minutes all up) and you will see what I mean. Not sure if I have ever seen a show do this in a more intelligent fashion.

So watch the clips. Then watch the entire series. Seriously. Seven out of five. So, so good.