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Sherlock
2010 · TV series · 90 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat
A modern update finds the famous sleuth and his doctor partner solving crime in 21st century London.
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86 comments on Hacker News
The American series (House and Elementary) has the advantage of more seasons and episodes, which I think is sometimes required to showcase the challenges of drug addiction and mental health. The fact that these characters having to come back to face the same problem over and over again episode after episode is more true to the nature of the mental health problem itself.
BBC Sherlock has too little episodes to bring audience along a prolonged struggle with mental health.
I had only heard of Belgravia from watching the Sherlock Holmes TV episode, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scandal_in_Belgravia It looked like a fancy area from that.
British TV is doing _great_ in the streaming era: black mirror, adolescence, peaky blinders, the crown, call the midwife, derry girls, downtown abbey; and so many great police procedurals: line of duty, endeavour, the bay, Sherlock, grace; even those Harlan coben miniserieses - the ones with at least one absurd plot twist per episode - are great fun!
While I’ll be among the first to moan that we’ll never see another red dwarf, python, tinker tailor/smiley’s people, yes minister, father ted [0] .. British tv is still producing great stuff.
It’s the “bureaucrats” in the bbc who are under threat from streaming. I’m not losing sleep!
[0] made in Britain; simply could not have been made in Ireland as was.
>I had a weird encounter on reddit with some users who expressed that "only X people understand how this character in the movie feels". Interestingly, there was no indication that the movie intended this interpenetration.
The death of the author is a reasonable approach to reading a work. But what you said reminded me of the more delusional view in which a) the watcher/reader's approach is the only "correct" one, and b) anyone who disagrees is *EVIL*. An instance of this happened among Tumblrinas obsessed with the supposed homosexual relationship between Holmes and Watson on BBC's Sherlock, and who were certain that the next episode of the show would reveal this to the world. Welp. <https://np.reddit.com/r/the_meltdown/comments/5oc59t/tumblr_post_after_the_latest_episode_of_sherlock/>
Right, so by that rule, someone could stage a theater production or movie of the exact text of one of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books, but could not make anything similar to the characters and relationships of Holmes and Watson. Forever.
And exactly how similar must the new production be? Can there be any deviation from the exact words written by Doyle? It seems your rule would certainly ban the excellent BBC production of Sherlock [0]
What about Shakespeare? It seems this would ban the entire writing and production of West Side Story (of course a 1950's riff on Romeo and Juilet) [1,2].
That sounds like a permanent extension of copyright, with a limited media exception.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018ttws
[1] https://www.westsidestory.com/
[2] https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/west-side-story-2021-film-romeo-and-juliet/
I feel this can sometimes happen even when the writers stay the same.
Highly subjective opinion incoming!
By season 3, the characters on the BBC show Sherlock had become caricatures of their season 1 selves. Though maybe it doesn't help that the characterisation was always a bit over the top anyway...
There are a bunch of well-known areas where popular calculators tend to give incorrect answers: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/examples-of-calculator-errors
It’s mostly fine until it isn’t. AI will probably operate in the same capacity. We already have so much incorrect information out there that’s part of our pop culture. Even down to things like the fact that Darth Vader never said, “Luke, I am your father,” and Mae West never said, “Why don’t you come see me sometime?”
Even basic movie quotes are beyond our ability to get right. Hilariously, I just asked ChatGPT about these quotes and it explained that these are common misquotes, told me what was actually said in these movies, and explained some relevant context.
Sherlock never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson” even once in the books. Kirk never said, “Beam me up, Scotty.” We’re much less correct than we like to think. And somehow we’ve survived.
ChatGPT is fallible just like we are. We’ll manage, just like we always have.
>Why do tv shows need multiple seasons ?
Because people get comfortable with the characters/storyline and want to see more. Is it really that difficult of a concept?
And I find it amusing that you bring up British TV, because the only shows that I can think of that are super popular and have a worldwide audience are the ones that run for quite a while. The Crown, Downton Abbey, Peaky Blinders, Sherlock. Yeah they do a lot of shorter ones but those barely get out of the country as far as I'm aware.
We've just had a thing with Sherlock Holmes.
2 films, the Sherlock and elementary series and now enola Holmes, despite Sherlock Holmes being near (in copyright terms) the end of copyright.
So that would tend to disprove the thesis. Plus it suggests that having the author on board is valueless. Would you want to pay the author a fee and get them on board, or do you want them bad mouthing your new film?
Further, any author that writes a book with any legitimate expectation that it's going to be made in to a film is probably successful enough already.
JK Rowling probably wasn't expecting a film deal. She wrote the books without that expectation. I'm interested in a copyright that encourages and allows her to write books, not make her into a multimillionaire. If anything her success means she can write less books. Is that a good thing? I'm not in favour of keeping her in penury, but copyright should be about allowing them to work, not make it so they can stop.
It's a poor approach for people like me. My main thing is video games, youtube, and reading. But I like really good TV series. I've enthusiastically watched Peaky Blinders as soon as it's available after I heard about it and picked it up after season 4. I didn't start watching Breaking Bad until Season 4 finished airing. Same with a bunch of other shows, Blacklist (S6), Game of Thrones (S4), Sherlock(S5), Mandalorian (S2), Ozarks (S3). That doesn't give a lot of shows time to catch my eye.
The ones I recall watching after S1 aired over the past decade are Fargo, Better Call Saul (because I saw BB), True Detective, House of Cards, Atlanta (because I'm from Atlanta), Lupin, because they got truly rave reviews. I'm even more conservative with Netflix shows now because it's pretty much a given that anything I even attempt to watch is going to get cancelled after a season or 2.
> Three names no parent will name their sons - Benedict, Adolf, Judas
What? The name is now extremely popular again, thank to the actor from the Marvel movies (Dr. Strange) and TV's Sherlock Holmes.
I'm talking, of course, about Adolf Judas Cumberbatch.
Yes, last year—erm, I mean in 2020—the Doyle estate sued Netflix for creating a movie in which Holmes shows emotion… they claimed:
“Among other copied elements, the Springer novels [on which Netflix’s film is based] make extensive infringing use of Conan Doyle’s transformation of Holmes from cold and critical to warm, respectful, and kind in his relationships.” [1]
This is essentially the entire substance of the lawsuit: that creating a new sister character that Holmes felt affection for infringed on their copyright of a single passage in one of the later Doyle stories where Holmes expressed concern for Watson who had gotten shot.
Netflix settled.
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6956021-Sherlock.html
Also gained a bit of fame from an episode of Sherlock.
The show Sherlock shows that actually this solar system knowledge helps him in the end of the episode :)
Ugh, Moffat's Sherlock, despite having very few episodes (about 12), was dead in the water halfway through because it turned into Moffat's trademark LOST-style garbage string along of ever less sensical unresolvable plot twists
Yeah, and I generally agree with what you were saying. And I totally agree with some like 24 sigh
I think that generally US seasons are too long. However, I only realized that after watching a bunch of foreign (mostly UK) shows on Netflix. These are shows I would have never been exposed to.
I too agree that sometimes the UK ones are a bit too short. I remember wanting to watch Luther, but was thinking 5 seasons was a lot (despite loving Idris Elba). Then we got watching and one season (err, series) was 2 episodes. Five series had a total of 20 episodes. That was crazy. The same goes for Sherlock.
There's definitely a happy medium, and I feel that the 10ish episode length seems like a nice point.
So then just release episodes less frequently, like Moffat’s Sherlock, without sacrificing on production quality. Yeah the cast gets older but if the fans really wanted, they would click the button to recruit friends to pay recurring fees to it.
After all, I’m simply saying make a Netflix but where the amount of minutes you watch to the end determines how much you want to allocate from your payment that show. You have a chance to fix up the allocations before the end of the month, when they are committed.
The decision is taken out of the producers’ hands and instead of cancellation past some political threshold, results in slower episode velocity.
Nice job !! I finished the count of Monte Cristo a few years ago, and I must admit I fell in love, I cannot wait to read it again. Side note, I'd love Tarantino to make his version of it, either as a movie or even better, as a show ! Maybe even in today's time kinda like Sherlock did !!
It might also come from detecting recurring patterns and trying to facilitate them.
Before the simplified version, we already used to only register to Netflix during long vacations, binge watch whatever we wanted (typically Black Mirror and Sherlock) and cancel the rest of the year.
Now that it’s way easier, there’s less friction in reenabling the account when there’s a series we want to watch and set the subscripting to cancel again at the end of the month.
Also not near Moffat, Steven, the person famous for being showrunner behind BBC TV series Sherlock and Dracula and few seasons of Doctor Who, who was born in about 85 kms from that forest.
I reached the same conclusion today. When I logged back in to disable the autoplay-previews, it occurred to me that the only reason I have a subscription still is to catch the remaining Sherlock (with Cumberbatch) episodes that I haven't yet seen.
But I realized they might also be found elsewhere, and it turns out they're carried by Amazon Prime Video. That was the last straw for my Netflix subscription.
I'm amazed by how thoroughly Netflix has changed me from a lover to a hater of their service and company in recent years. It's not just a matter of cancelling because they don't have a catalog I care about. It's that I feel lied to and manipulated as well.
If you want to learn to speak english well, watch those programs that use English properly. Blackadder. Archer. Sherlock. Even some of the marvel movies (GOTG) are very careful in how they pronounce and articulate words. Then watch every Brian Cox and Attenborough documentary. You might come out with a bit of a British accent but that is far far better than any youtube-derived accent. Better you sound like Stirling Archer than [insert random youtube person].
Really, the problem isn't scientific. Various sci-fi authors have created all kinds of "hyperspaces" with well-defined rules that would allow for almost any interpretation.
The problem is that it wrecks the drama. Why wasn't this idea used earlier? It's blindingly obvious, not a clever deduction, nor was this some sort of special circumstance (no slingshot around a black hole or some other very unusual thing, for instance). Why won't this be the solution to every battle in the future? Why bother with capital ships if they're so vulnerable to this simple attack? Is the Death Star even necessary if ships can be this powerful on their own? Why did the Rebellion wait so long to deploy this? They'd have been in a wildly better position if they evacuated that ship at the very beginning and used it; the same effect on the enemy, only they have more of their forces left. Why doesn't the Empire, sorry, "First Order" use this on the rebels, sorry, Legitimate Representatives of the Galactic Government Who Are Somehow Still The Rebels? (Although here we come up against the silliness of a sub-light stern chase being the whole movie in a universe with trivial FTL, too. The failures of this movie are like the Shrek onion.)
The problem isn't the science, and it isn't even necessarily that the questions are utterly unanswerable, or that if you try hard enough you can fanon the problem away. (Though IMHO in this particular situation, you must fanon very hard.) The problem is that it raised all these questions, and didn't even acknowledge them, let alone try to address them, and that smacks of bad writing.
There is this popular idea in the writing world that writing science fiction means you can just do whatever you want, whenever you want. The producers of Star Trek: Voyager, for instance, had this idea and clearly articulated it in interviews. And, well, in some sense it's true, but in the sense that it's true, it's no more true in science fiction than it is in any other medium. Nothing stopped Doyle from Sherlock solving all his mysteries by consulting a medium. Nothing stopped Rian Johnson from solving his problem with this particular ass-pull. But being science fiction doesn't prevent the same dramatic consequence happening to the latter as it would in the former. At best it just gives fans a few more avenues for fanon. But that's not good drama.
There are no stakes in a universe where anything can happen at any time.
In particular, I'd highlight that whole Empire/rebels thing again, because that's even more important than the scifi tech stuff. There's just no sensible grand-scale interpretation of the legitimate government of the galaxy being chased by some upstart First Order, and the First Order having all the advantages, literally all of them. (Some advantages, sure, especially around having Sith support. But when did the Galactic government get so anemic? We saw much more strength in tangential fights in the prequels.) Honestly the sequels have been screwed up from the getgo because the writers think they can just do whatever they want, whenever they want, and that the quality never suffers for it. They're spending against an account they don't even know exists and overdrew against it so hard that they may have actually spent Star Wars, Star Wars of all things, dry.
Indeed. I'll continue to enjoy George Pal's 'Time Machine' film, despite the fact that I haven't seen any store-window mannikins for a couple of decades.
A great story is great despite its setting, not because of it. 'Moby Dick' will continue to be powerful despite the expiry of whale-hunting; 'Sherlock' still spellbinding despite the extinction of persian slippers, pleasant landladies and street-cabs. Quite sure there'll never be an AI character quite as interesting.
In the TV show "Sherlock," the titular main character's self-deprecating videos for the "Everyone" collective (spoof on Anonymous) are a sort of ritual sacrifice as a medium of payment.
There's a scene in the first episode of Sherlock where it's pointed out that Dr. Watson is a "British doctor injured in the war in Afghanistan" - I laughed. Apparently I was the only one in my circle of friends who got that that was the original character's biography, written in 1887!
Disguising yourself as a car seat also features in this episode of 'Sherlock', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Thatchers
>Except, those things are purposely portrayed as bad.
Many lolicon manga do the same. Why is whether or not it is portrayed as bad the problem? Many are actually made interesting by portraying the siuation as morally ambiguous, such as in popular television shows.
>nowhere near as common and lustful as sexual and emotional abuse of individuals, young or not.
Why is that relevant?
>Normalization in causation to action requires that the actions already be happening and already be acceptable to some extent
Murder, violence, and war already happen, and war is acceptable (to most, though not I) - yet we have people who complain that violent videogames "normalise" violent beahviour. You haven't really provided evidence that (i) this "normalisation" is bad (beacuse this would be implying that it's bad for people to think or have opinions in a certain way) (ii) this "normalisation" has any effect upon the incidence of violent crimes, sexual or not.
>Again, distopian, which is very differnt from your own culture or beliefs.
Sherlock and House probably "normalises" drug use, even though it's set in present conditions. There are probably other examples of people doing bad things that are portrayed in media, but I'm not well versed enough in popular culture to give examples. I'm still not so sure why being dystopic has any effect or not. Would it follow that if lolicon TV/manga/art was set in a dystopic universe like the Hunger Games, it would be fine for you?
Or if the argument is based on being realistic, what is there to say of the many non-realistic things that happen in lolicon TV/manga/art, and indeed the unrealistic body proportions? Many, many anime are set with large towering robots controlled by little girls, for example.
Finally, many lolicon manga portray what is happening in a sad or twisted light, similar to how Breaking Bad shows Walt's activity, for example. There is one manga in which a girl is violently raped by a man claiming to check radiation levels in her house, for example. And this is of course ignoring the fact that many people are attracted to the material beacuse it is taboo in the first place, which is what's behind many kinks you or I would consider normal. As such, they don't want to make it real.
I've seen some theaters that show Sherlock and other high-production TV, and they seem to do quite well with it. I haven't heard about GoT, though.
As an side - what would the legality be if a group of people "booked" a theater to air a TV show? Would the theater or viewers be liable for holding a commercial screening using a private copy of the thing?
The villain as plotted in current shows share roots in the older mystic stories but they also mirror current cultural values rather than past cultural values.
If for example we would have Hansel and Gretel, which is full of old symbolism about past cultural views of older women, it would be completely impossible to gender swap the antagonist. Interpreting a male antagonist in that story in current culture we would invoking feelings of pedophilia and not cannibalism, changing the story in a very radical way.
With current cultural values, stories generally cast female antagonists with a strong theme of betrayal. Even in the few cases of female henchmen like that one specific James Bond movie with female henchmen, we still see that arc. Male henchmen in other movies don't get such arcs, and is generally simply thrown in as an obstacle to be disposed of. Female henchmen are also generally not killed, which further limits the possibilities.
Last, the Sherlock version would not work with a late 70 old woman if they kept all other aspect of the character intact. Listen on the clip and try to imagine a old woman saying it. The character explicitly say they want to be seen as the classic villain, and as such it do not work unless its male. Even the wicked witch do not go around and say to the protagonist that "I am the villain and you should hate me".
The wicked witch trope is named after the wicked witch of the west character, which don't do much leering or hand rubbing. There is a lot of cackling, possible some eye-rolling, but that's about it. An other famous witch villain is the white witch (Narnia), which has none of those attributes.
But lets look at a famous villain that has been portrait as both female and male roles and see how they differ. Moriarty is male in the TV show Sherlock (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN7DYPJLXkc), and female in Elementary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7i8cQontg). Which character is show more as the typical villain, and which is portrait as more complex with redeeming values? If they keep the script identical with the exact same lines, what would happened if the genders was reversed for the two shows?
> Compare the Netflix versions of Black Mirror and Sherlock Holmes with the ones put out by the BBC
Black Mirror was never made by the BBC, and all episodes of Sherlock were made by the BBC not by Netflix, so neither of your examples make any sense and don't allow you to compare what you are saying they would.
> If they reboot Batman a dozen more times, it doesn't keep you from thinking that Adam West was the best Batman.
Recently, I've been watching Sherlock. After doing some reading, I learned that Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed character ever, "with more than 70 actors playing the part in over 200 films" [1]. Talking with a work mate, he said his favorite portrayal was Jeremy Brett. I also learned that the original works are in the public domain, which is probably why it is so often used as source material.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#Adaptations_in_other_media
It's more like there was always a lot of pent-up supply of amazing content available. The reason the supply was not finding an outlet was because of the problem that such content doesn't have the mass appeal required to be a hit show on non-premium cable (or, god forbid, a theatrical release movie). So the outlets were limited. HBO was one such premium outlet but it was always limited by the number of primetime hours in the day because of the cable based business model (still is).
Netflix comes along and starts ordering shows where they know the target audience is going to be very limited, say only 10% of all college graduates from big metro areas. That's enough for a show to be Netflix success. Some of them they contract with US production companies (House of Cards, OIT New Black etc.), others they source from non-US TV networks (Sherlock, Black Mirror etc.)
If they have enough of these shows, they can cover most of their target audience and make sure that most people have at least a few original shows keeping them hooked to the $10/month subscription. There's no limit on airtime since Netflix is all on-demand. So now there are dozens (or who knows, even hundreds) of these shows and all they need for you is to get hooked on one or two of those. And a few of them have been legitimate breakout hits like House of Cards, Stranger Things, OITNB etc. Maybe individually none of those shows is as big as Game of Thrones, but combined, they're obviously doing a great job for Netflix.
For HBO to truly compete with Netflix, they'll have to break their "Cable first" model and truly start thinking in terms of unlimited online hours. We'll see when they release their first online only show.
The most recent episode of Timeless took place at this World's Fair. It was a bit educational on the time period. Along with some random trivia that was mentioned, these historical people were portrayed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Holmes - Serial killer - Also mentioned in the 2nd episode of Sherlock this season
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Hayden - First female architect graduate from MIT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini - Needs no intro?
I wish more history could be worked into regular television shows.
> Sure, but for privacy, VPNs are shit. You can't recommend VPNs for privacy.
Why not? Doesn't it depend on your purpose and threat level? If you have state level actors chasing you than VPNs will only be part of your opsec toolchest — preferring TOR where possible and being very strict about where you access the internet (certainly not at home). But if you are just downloading the latest episode of Sherlock from your local hive of wretched scum and villainy, a VPN will surely help.
VPNs are only part of the solution of course (not using any social media, not connecting to any of your normal accounts, limiting VPN use to whatever it is you want to keep private), but you seem adamant that even this is not a valid use of VPNs, or am I misreading your posts?
I'm a native English speaker with the world's most broadcast accent (the main Hollywood movie accent) and I'm a fan of Sherlock and Doctor Who. Those programs are produced with the most well known UK accents.
And yet I still have to rewind a few times in every episode for dialogue that I just can't decypher. Sometimes I never quite get the words.
Somehow I don't think it is just the alt-right that has trouble suspending disbelief with a social justice enthused media. There's a good reason why South Park has a character called 'Token'. These political messages are shoehorned so bluntly into fictional television shows there is no reason to hold back from describing them as political propaganda. I'm glad I catch only brief snippets here and there through Youtube and Netflix.
It's the recent BBC Sherlock that really took the biscuit though. Sherlock Holmes could not be less interested in solving crimes when it is a proto-feminist movement murdering men. Great job guys.
One such row of "houses" was featured in an episode of "Sherlock".
Reminded me of the BBC "Sherlock" series, which attempts to represent visually Holmes' mental experience of gleaning information, hidden to normal people, from his highly developed observational skills. Specialized domain knowledge and active attention can indeed provide a kind of "information overlay" represented in this film, and without depending on a device. But I wonder how close to Holmes-style powers we can come through training ourselves to see beneath the surface?
I discovered that aphantasia was a thing, and that it seemed to match me, a couple of months ago.
May I ask if you feel embarrassment when you think about an embarrassing event in your past?
The adjustment is quite an odd feeling. I use mostly the same language to describe things as other people. I will use terms like 'mental image' or 'yeah i can see you wearing that', but to me it was far more metaphorical. I had the same realization about counting sheep. Now I feel a bit uncomfortable when I use some terms. I'm used to using them but that was when I thought everybody else was using them in the same way as myself.
I had wondered if the Text popups in the TV series Sherlock came from someone with without aphantasia trying to understand a description given by someone with aphantasia. I could describe what I 'see' when I think about something as a cloud of facts relating to the subject, If someone who inherently thought of such things visually tried to interpret my viewpoint I could quite easily understand how they end up with the effect used in Sherlock. It's not what I see of course. I don't see words floating in space. I see nothing. To some the idea of not imagining things visually must seem just as impossible.
I think it's different to imagination though, I can't visualize but I can imagine.
I tried this experiment:
Imagine two identical closed cardboard boxes. In one of them there is a duck.
I can't see the boxes but I can imagine them, and the box with a duck in it is distinctly different to the one without. My friends say they can visualize the boxes and they do indeed look identical, but strangely they still seem to know which one the duck is inside.
> Sure, you could instead hope for a world where the the studios don't want or mandate DRM, but that's pretty pie-in-the-sky thinking, especially for a cheap subscription service like Netflix.
Whether the studios want or even mandate DRM is irrelevant. DRM is fundamentally not securable (in the sense that it will always be breakable).
Bits are (nearly) free. When I buy digital goods, I'm not paying for the goods. I'm paying for the service and ultimately just voting with my money ("make more films and services like this, please", so to speak).
Illegal film services offer me superb service. I can download whole seasons of shows in whichever quality I want in the click of a button. I get archivability - I don't have to worry about the media ever becoming unavailable due to licensing, censorship, the publisher going out of business, etc. And I get desktop integration; I can hit the super key, type 'Sherlock' and hit enter, and an episode starts playing immediately. Netflix requires that I open a new browser (Google Chrome b/c Firefox on Linux doesn't work), type a URL, authenticate, and then proceed with the above steps, all on the assumption that they even have what I'm looking for (new shows don't get added very quickly) and that I have a solid internet connection. After that, the video has to buffer and I can't seek randomly.
If purchasing rights to this media involves supporting such an anti-user system, I simply won't purchase the media. It's a shame for the artists - I wish it were different - but in the meanwhile I will support the arts by dumping the money I would have spent on Netflix, Google Play, etc into more usable and pro-consumer/pro-artist systems like Bandcamp and Patreon.
made it explicit that in the show Sherlocks's mind palace 'technique' is actually just a drug trip
This isn't really so.
Sherlock uses the memory palace technique, without drugs, throughout the entire series.
SPOILER-Y STUFF:
The immersion Sherlock goes through in "The Abominable Bride" is of a different nature -- usually he is focused and in control, driving the search, but in this instance he is looking to go deeper, to dream his way to an answer by letting go of external reality. The drugs are an expedient to get him into that state. It's analogous to the difference between searching a database/knowledgebase and losing oneself in a fully immersive VR scenario.
SPOILER:
(It is true that Sherlock told Mycroft that he was doing the mind palace thing, and Mycroft points out that the mind palace is merely a memory technique and this is beyond that, i.e. a drug trip, but given Sherlock's relationship with Mycroft, it isn't surprising that he'd underplay the drugs, is it? Also, I don't think Mycroft knows Sherlock deeply enough to know what Sherlock can do in his mind palace -- may not even know he had one, given how he reacts to Sherlock's mention of it.)
EPISODE SPOILERS FOLLOW:
And, just a few quick reminders: remember, in the regular series, Sherlock's not the only one with a mind palace -- said character refers to his own and says, "You know about Mind Palaces, don’t you, Sherlock?"
And, in that same episode, we also see an active (i.e. non-drugged) Sherlock thinking his way out of a jam -- in his mind, various characters show up to guide him. As one of them says, "It's all well and clever having a Mind Palace but you've only three seconds...to use it.". Another character later on says, "Must be something in this ridiculous memory palace of yours that can calm you down."
(The above examples are on YouTube, but would really spoil some things, so I won't link to them here; there's also a transcript out there, if you want to look it up.)
I read a fascinating book on the the Art of Memory by Francis Yates some years ago [1] in which she explores the topic with much depth, a pleasure to read. I have certainly been surprised we forgot about this - once I became aware of it, it made so much sense. I personally try to use my memory where possible, especially in this day of immediate access to digital diaries and calendars. It's a challenge and I'm not sure our modern world can support such ideas for much longer.
If nothing else, read the reviews on the Amazon link below to learn a lot more of interest on the subject.
I remember that when I this in the discussed BBC Sherlock Holmes episode I was not at all surprised that the writers had thought to use this technique. I suppose Arthur Conan Doyle didn't know about this specifically, or it would have made quite a lot of sense to have written it into Sherlock's story.
1. The Art of Memory, Francis Yates pub. 1966
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Memory-Frances-Yates/dp/1847922929*
The best shows are those that don't fit a particular category, or that grow to move between categories. Lots of great british TV bounces between comedy and drama (sherlock, cuffs). Some American shows cannot be pinned to a specific age range (simpsons). I still laugh when I see TopGear listed as "informational/other" by my cable company.
Also ... (i just noticed)
Australian Movies 5230 Belgian Movies 262 Korean Movies 5685 Latin American Movies 1613 Middle Eastern Movies 5875 New Zealand Movies
No Canada? No Canada comedy, no Canada movies, nothing? Belgian but not Canadian? Look to the end of your favorite shows. Look for the "Canadian film tax credit" statement before saying there aren't any canadian shows.
> You have to factor in movie studios being reluctant to base their works on public domain work because it makes it harder to create a franchise out of it.
Didn't stop the very successful 2009 and 2011 Sherlock movie franchise, or the ongoing very successful BBC Sherlock movie series...
I don't know if a netflix engineer reads this:
I still have an issue that I can only watch some series/movies (e.g. sherlock holmes series) only in french + english, while my friends can watch them in english + german. All in same country (Luxembourg).
Changing the language on the tv and resetting netflix (konami code) changed to the "german" version. But now it's back to english + french.
Best thing would be to have access to all 3 languages here and not make any choice/guess based on tv language or browser environment
The problem I have with Netflix recommendations is that while they understand genres, they're not good at recommending good shows.
Since I've watched Archer and Arrested Development, Netflix thinks I'd like every mediocre comedy show, since I've watched Sherlock and Luther, it thinks I'd like mediocre non-serialized detective shows, and anything made by the BBC. Watching all of BSG (which isn't even on Netflix anymore, RIP) has given me a permanent section of terrible sci-fi recommendations.
I've seen the first "season" of black mirror it was OK is just don't like that type of Scifi I like my Scifi more bigger than life, and while i don't mind some "futuristic earth" shows Black Mirror has the same issue I have with most UK shows and that they produce too little episodes to even fill an afternoon, but Black Mirror just took it to a whole new level with having like what 2-3 episodes?
The new season on Netflix will hopefully be at least 10 episode long so I might actually take another spin at it, waiting 10 years for another 3 episodes of Luther or Sherlock is bad enough I'm not going through this again.
With US TV shows I usually wait until at least the mid season or the 9 episode pickup because lately US TV shows especially from the bigger networks have less job security than the offspring of JRR Martin novels and the Walking Dead characters.
So far we had quite a "decent" year, 12 Monkeys has been renewed, Childhoods End and Westworld are coming, the CW actually managed to make comic book shows (never was a huge comic fan, infact i never had a chance to read a single book i think) cool, we are bloody getting The Man in the High Castle show on Amazon and Marvel's Netflix production is in full gear.
Releasing movies and TV shows simultaneously around the world would cut piracy a lot. That's one pretty clear criteria: the content is sold in a digital format somewhere but not in your home country.
Take the Sherlock TV series for example: who wants to wait for two years for a new season, and then an additional two months for it to arrive in your particular country? In Finland the series is shown on a state-funded channel who don't even get any money from you watching the show on their channel.
I need to disagree with you.
In my whole life pirate content was present, sometimes more, sometimes less.
I live in a third world country, with poor access to outside culture, and the culture present here is not that interesting to me (example: the most popular music genres, bands and groups all talk about extremely pornographic sex, and has heavy percussion emphasis, with little or no melody, the biggest national party is focused on that same music genres and debauchery).
When I was a kid, the ONLY way to get computer stuff, was pirate it, sometimes some shareware software was for sale for about 10 USD (yep, I paid 10 USD on a SHAREWARE copy of Wolf 3D, having only the first episode), even to get pirated stuff sometimes was extremely hard (to get a copy of Doom 1 and 2, my dad made some engineering services do Kia motors, and agreed to give them a discount if their CEO, that was a known Doom player, gave us a copy, the guy gave my dad a box with about 20 floppies or something).
So, just because I was born here, I have no right to have foreign culture? Because I was born here, I am supposed to settle for a culture about percussion music, debauched promiscuous sex and soccer?
I have no right to coding books? Research papers? European music of all genres (from french eletronica to austrian classical)? I can't see excellent TV series from UK (like Sherlock) and instead must settle for local TV programs with melodramatic plots that praise villains that are adulterous swindlers and con artists?
I seriously don't understand people that think that culture, knowledge and information is not a right, that think that poor people, or people from distant places must resign themselves to remain ignorant.
Yes, it is a great read.
I heard about the "Memory Palace" on BBC's Sherlock. Holmes says that you can theoretically remember everything (I think this was in the episode The Hounds of Baskerville). I then happened upon this book via gatesnotes[0], and picked it up.
The author is quite successful in learning and putting this technique to use. He reaches the finals of the USA Memory Championship. However, he says this at the end - "For all the memory stunts I could now perform, I was still stuck with the same old shoddy memory that misplaced car keys and cars. Even while I had greatly expanded my powers of recall for the kinds of structured information that could be crammed into a memory palace, most of the things I wanted to remember in my everyday life were not facts or figures or poems or playing cards or binary digits."
It seems this method can help in memorizing things you consciously put effort to remember. This becomes easier as you practice. But if you were thinking of using this to remember every point of your life, as in where you placed your car keys this morning, or where you left your phone, things get murky - like what the Author mentioned. Although I do wonder how many people would try doing that.
0: http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Moonwalking-with-Einstein
Isn't Sherlock more akin to movies than TV episodes at this point? Each season is quite like little trilogies.
Sherlock episodes are also like 2-3 normal episodes in length. They are each essentially mini movies
Not sure about that I think many people where hooked on Sherlock (the BBC one) by the first episode.
I think a few years ago they had a section outlining all the polite British euphemisms that are employed in writing unflattering obituaries yet avoiding the libel lawyers (describing a philanderer, drunkard, closet homosexual, etc. in so many words recognizable to all yet not exposing undue liability)
edit: http://www.economist.com/node/21541767
Reminds me of when Watson expesses sudden outrage at his newspaper description of himself as a 'confirmed bachelor' on the Sherlock TV show I bent over double laughing, utterly mystifying my friends.
My friends in the industry seem to like it a lot, but I couldn't make it through the first episode. It's like the sterile hybrid of BBC Sherlock and Fight Club, with the computer plotline of the movie Hackers and DDOS substituted for Gibsons.
If you're watching Mr. Robot now and haven't watched at least the first two seasons of BBC Sherlock, stop what you're doing and switch shows.
Halt and Catch Fire was, I thought, a lot better than some of the reviews I'd read.
I've noticed this in a few BBC shows vs. American shows. In a British TV show there will be characters that just happen to be black, but in an American show it's going to get talked about eventually. Admittedly they aren't the same genres, but the shows that immediately come to mind for me like this are Sherlock and Dr. Who vs. say 30 Rock or Community.
Hey, friend, no. Just don't. I have no idea what's going on in your life, but don't. I have been there, just trust me, it will pass. Just focus on taking it step by step, living day by day, just survive and wait, it will be worth it. I guarantee you there will be time you will be glad you've waited, even if everything is shit now.
Future will be very interesting, you'll want to see it, you'll just need to be there to see it. For now just focus on surviving and waiting and find any reason to go forward.
Even simple/silly ones, like watching the next episode of Sherlock that comes out in 2016, or finishing a good book.
Watch some comedy. Watch Louis CK, watch Bill Burr, watch Community. To me it really helps, even when things are really bad.
Elon Musk will put people on freaking Mars. Self driving cars and robots will be everywhere. Medicine will make amazing progress to fix our health problems. You'll just need to be there to see it, to be a part of it.
Computers will kick ass, scientists will make crazy discoveries. You will find things worth caring about. You will have cool people in your life too, just hold on.
There are people like you, there is a place where you belong, there are things worth living for.
Also when things are bad your brain just gets into a bad place, and a lot of these thoughts are caused by chemicals. Things may seem hopeless but after some time your brain chemistry changes and you look at the same situation very differently, even if it doesn't seem real to you now.
You will find your way, it will get better. Right now - don't be hard on yourself. Just wait and hold on.
Email me at raymestalez@gmail.com if you'll need to talk.
I personally knew the method under the name "memory palace" but not "memory of Loci". You should maybe mention both terms.
Why don't you link to the Wikipedia page as well ? The Wikipedia pages refers to multiple Sherlock episodes where the method is visually shown to the audience. You could eventually add a video extract, but as far as I remember, they are rather cheesy.
This starts off similar to the "mind palace" from the BBC TV series Sherlock Holmes. And gets very detailed and interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
From the site:
Step 1 - Find a place: We start by preparing your spatial memory. To do this, you need to choose an actual place or building that you’re very familiar with. This could be your home, work, school, or any place that you can close your eyes and imagine or "see" in detail ...
Hmmmmmm if I apply that to that researcher's own words, then he is lying to confuse you! It's a Goedelian paradox!
Actually, I think the bigger point is that researcher's rarely "tell all." Just like Moriarty in the final episode of Season 2 of Sherlock (on BBC 2013-2014), sometimes a work is created as an advertisement demonstrating the ability to draw larger returns. Those intimate with the data will always have more than than will or can possibly publish.
Sharing information about someone out of context is still a great threat. Heck, it happens all the time: a politician digs up a school paper written by an opponent who was a fiery socialist 30 years ago, and tries to paint them with that brush. And it works. So, even with the sex thing, you might not be embarrassed, but the information can and will be presented in a way to maximize your pain. You might not care about people knowing you ate a bunch of dicks, but your opponent is going to cast it, for example, as non-consensual, or will dig up some dirt on the sex partners. Perhaps they are under-age, non-consenting, or willing (with a little inducement) to simply lie about what you did.
Bottom line: information is power, and even lack of shame cannot protect you from the damage it can do in malicious hands.
(BTW your point is well taken. There was an episode of Sherlock where a (presumably young and attractive) female member of the British royal family engaged a prostitute for some lesbian S&M play - and a the gov went to a great deal of expense to cover it up. My thought was, "why bother?" People's imaginations being what they are, the biggest impact would be a small uptick in UK births in 9-10 months.)
> Are you disputing that activities such as "Applying for a job" are not essential?
No, just that you have to be precise about what is essential and what isn't, and tailor the solution to the actual problem. It's essential to be able to apply for jobs online. It's not essential to be able to watch the latest episodes of Sherlock on Netflix. If the concern is really about making sure the poor have adequate access to the internet for things like job applications, the way to go is to subsidize wireless service with data access. Alternatively, cheap, broadly available broadband already exists in the form of DSL service.
I'm aware this happened with Season Four of Arrested Development. There was a massive hype right up until it was to premiere on Netflix and then … nothing. People watched it, then moved on.
I personally love to be able to binge a new television show, like House of Cards but at the same time I also love the discussions around it (Breaking Bad had some very cool discussions in between episodes). So I'm not quite sure what format is better in the long run.
Perhaps the future will be more like how Sherlock Series 3 was aired (only a few days between episodes, not an entire week). Whatever the case, television is only getting better from this point onwards.
> ... requires a set that fully surrounds the camera position ...
The scenery 'behind the camera' could be composited in.
And other tools might work well to focus the viewer's attention in new ways. Like lighting the important actions and bits of dialogue with brighter lighting than the rest of the view, or a slightly different color.
Imagine an episode of Sherlock that had the world slow down and such a lighting effect that acts as the 'light of Sherlock's attention' floating/darting around a scene and other characters. Giving the viewer a chance to think and try to deduce at his speed, so to speak.
One could also use a lower/higher resolution in areas of the view to suggest where a viewer should look or to communicate the confusion of a main character about what is going on behind them.
Heh; ridiculously offtopic, but that article has a picture of Sherlock(from the tv series) labelled Bertrand Russell about halfway down on the right... how does that even happen?
> the (unaired) pilot for BBC's Sherlock is a not fantastic 60 minutes with significant pacing problems, which was subsequently reshot and turned into a well received 90 minute miniseries
Oh, that's what it was then. I downloaded the first series of Sherlock and was surprised to see the same first story twice.
But I thought the first version was vastly superior to the second one; it had much less money, which, in my opinion, allowed it to be more intense and more "real".
Whatever you think, it's most interesting to watch both!
Although it's more expensive to do a separate pilot, it's not always a waste of time or money. In many cases, ideas that on paper are very good don't translate well. A pilot lets you catch these problems and remedy them. If you go straight to series you may end up only finding out about these issues when it's too late to fix them.
A few good examples of this: the (unaired) pilot for BBC's Sherlock is a not fantastic 60 minutes with significant pacing problems, which was subsequently reshot and turned into a well received 90 minute miniseries. The US version of Life on Mars got completed re-located and re-cast as the pilot was just bad (...most people wouldn't call what ended up as 'good', but it was a vast improvement on the pilot).
Neither approach is without its problems. Take a show like Game of Thrones, which is very expensive to make. On the one hand, HBO could have saved millions of dollars by not ordering a pilot. On the other, it was pretty clear once it came back from post production that the approach the writers had originally taken wasn't going to work, and a number of changes were made to make the show more accessible to people who hadn't read the books.
So HBO did 'waste' several million dollars on a pilot that never aired, but the ability for the creative team to review the pilot before embarking on a full series commitment meant many changes could be made that resulted in a better show. HBO have easily recouped the lost money.
It's interesting that Amazon have taken the opposite approach to Netflix, and ordered a large number of pilots rather than going straight into series commitments.
There was also an episode of Sherlock [1] which used a hack against a pacemaker to assassinate someone. It's an interesting theory, but the way this article reads, it's almost as if the medical equipment are incidentally harmed.
It reminds me somewhat of the Stuxnet virus, as it's a kind of hacking intended to cause physical harm. There's a term for it, but the term escapes me currently.
[1] http://welovetvmore.com/reviews/elementary-season-1-episode-21-a-landmark-story-review/
Why wouldn't it come close?
38 K people just raised $2 MM in 12 hours.
I think you're thinking about this all wrong.
I'd pay $10 to watch a new episode of Sherlock right now. Even if I have to wait 6 months for production. They can have $100, if I get 10 episodes. And if you can ONLY get episodes by paying for it, I think it'd scale.
Cool. I was reading an article on Cracked about this very subject. http://www.cracked.com/article_20214_5-so-called-signs-genius-that-any-idiot-can-learn_p2.html
There's a link to a youtube video which features the "Sherlock" television show. It shows the first encounter between Watson and Holmes where he deduces whether or not he was involved in the Afghanistan war. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYlVBhwfvL4
Its cool that that encounter happened in the book as well. I love how even though the time period is different, the subjects are still relevant.
-- Now about this article, some of these things are of course based of a fictional character. But, I don't think that's the point of the article. Its more about how to open your mind and observe closely what's in front of you. Perhaps, learning and applying the lessons from the fictional Holmes will actually expand ones horizons. Being that this is Hacker News , and the article was posted on Fast Company, I see how this may benefit a developer or an entrepreneur. You may be able to solve problems just by sitting back and not moving too fast. By simply being mindful and patient, maybe the solution will not only come to you but even compel you to act on it.
At least that's what I got out of it...
Felt compelled to post because I hadn't seen Suits mentioned. Modern Family continues to be reliable for laughs and hasn't been added yet. The League is the other show which I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode.
Hell on Wheels surprised me by having a strong second season.
I had high hopes for Copper, but it hasn't really grabbed me in the 1st handful of episodes.
Agree with all the obvious ones:
Homeland, Louie, Newsroom, Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Community.
My wife is addicted to Castle and I've come to really enjoy it too. Since we've caught up to date with that we've now switched over to Person of Interest, which I'm really enjoying.
I've fallen behind with the following and plan to catch up ASAP:
Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Breaking Bad.
PS: yeah, I watch a lot of TV :)
An interesting case in point is to look at BBC's Sherlock TV show. It portrays a very different sort of Sherlock than people are used to, a Sherlock which is perhaps homosexual, a Sherlock who is described as a "high functioning sociopath", and a Sherlock who is portrayed as perhaps being a fraud. The sorts of things that probably wouldn't be possible if the IP had to be licensed but which result in the show being a huge critical success and having an extremely dedicated fan following.
Another example would be all of Shakespeare's plays, which predominantly would be considered derivative works of other recently written plays and stories at the time.
One can't help but wonder how many other equally daring ideas for derivative works have been shut down due to the excessive length of IP protection.
The gulf between homage and derivative work is quite wide. Consider a few examples of famous derivative works: Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, Alice in Wonderland, Apocalypse Now, Muppet Christmas Carol. Right now there are no less than 3 different ongoing adaptations of Sherlock Holmes (the movie series, the BBC series, and CBS's Elementary series).
These are works that would be patently illegal if the source material were not in the public domain. This isn't just about "remix culture", it's about being able to adapt and interpret what's out there, fully and without restriction. Clearly there is value to allowing such artistic freedom once a work has grown sufficiently old. However, today that age has grown quite impractically long. A movie such as War of the Worlds (a 110+ year old book) can be made without seeking a licensing agreement, but movies such as The Hobbit (a 75 year old book), King Kong (79 years), The Chronicles of Narnia (62 years), Casino Royale (59 years), or The Dark Knight Rises (73 years) still require licensing.
And the sad part is that even in the next 20 years when, say, the Superman IP will be pushing 100 years old and Mickey Mouse even older it seems likely that such things will still require licensing.
The fact that the current IP laws have not utterly destroyed creativity or the productivity of creative industries is not a ringing endorsement. The fact is that they are stifling and they have been responsible for creating an industry which is too heavily controlled by a small group.
Yes, at least you have the page back. Grats. What I'm noticing is that my same 3 Facebook friends like both your fan page and the TV show's page. But that's possibly a strange coincidence.
This might be the work of FB running some categorization cleanup. Your fan page is now sub-categorized as a Community Page for the Sherlock TV show.
FB doesn't seem to have all popular fan pages sub-categorized. For example, fb.me/fansofapple, isn't shown connected to Apple at all.
You see it a lot in Korean movies and TV from the last decade. Very cool effect. I appreciated it in the excellent Sherlock series too, although in general season one was much more enjoyable/original/faithful than the second.
Sherlock (TV series) very modern and high paced, love the way they put SMS messages in view http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1475582/
Yeah, it doesn't take much to break even on Netflix at $7 a month. They have BBC Sherlock for instance, which iTunes wants $7 an episode for. So that's three months right there.
To clarify, the issue isn't so much that it won't work at all, it's that you won't get good vide quality over a slower connection. For instance, I'm traveling for a week, and will have hotel wifi. Game of Thrones will look pixelated on my third-gen iPad. That's not exactly the kind of experience I'm looking for.
In contrast, I purchased the latest episode of Sherlock in 1080p for this trip. It looks amazing on the iPad, and I'll be able to watch it on the plane or anywhere else.
If this thread is still active, I'll report back tonight on how HBO Go works on my hotel's wifi. If HBO Go would just let me cache a few shows this wouldn't be an issue.
And forget about watching any of these episodes on my plane flight.
Maybe I'm asking too much from an app with Go in the name.
I honestly believe that technologies like Flatr will make this possible.
You have to lower the barriers to having people purchase content. There's a mental barrier which stops you from spending $1 to watch another episode of House. Even though you like House, and you'd like to watch another episode.
And for "free content," well, ads suck. Nobody likes ads. We don't like being forces to watch ads, before we watch content. People who buy ad space don't like you to be able to skip their ads. YouTube is trying to pitch "skippable ads". Still not close enough, I think.
If I watch Sherlock from the BBC and like it, I Flatr it. I think that model works. I'm not sure - but that's my hunch.
Humble Indie Bundle is another great example - but I don't think it works for broadcast video.
Oh get over trying to shame me for "deciding I know what your ethics are" (I did no such thing and wouldn't know where to start). I've never even seen Gilligan's Island, I didn't know it was ropey quality, only that the parent had dismissed it and the entire industry because he thought it lowbrow.
Funded by advertising is a bit different it can still be run like a traditional business, but where is the amateur TV as good as BBC Frozen Planet, or Sherlock, Wallander or QI? And they're just people talking in scenic locations - or in a big room, nothing requiring months of filming and hundreds of people.
Where are the part time charity funded films like Lord of the Rings or The Shawshank Redemption? The Shining? 2001? Kill Bill?
Amateur work can be good, but mostly it's worse than professional work that's the informal definition of the difference between amateur and professional. The formal one being "profession: paid work".
I love clever touches like this in TV and films. When referencing for the purposes of a storyline niche topics such as CS , Maths or Physics I always feel that whilst writers need to make their story accessible to people who are not savvy in these topics they should always stay as true as possible to the field itself and not insult the intelligence of people who are familiar with these things.
I get quite annoyed when people put "hacking" scenes into films that are filled with nothing but nonsense. Usually legitimate technical jargon that is thrown together in ways that don't make sense.
Does anybody have any opinions of the modern Sherlock remakes that have appeared on the BBC recently?
Sherlock is a great series. I torrented the first 3 episodes when they came out in 2010, and they were an absolute treat. I love the format that they chose - going for quality over quantity, and creating a true movie-length story by making them 90 minutes each.
Unfortunately, season 2 won't be coming out until 2012, though I'm not sure why.
It is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv
I think this app is the first one that makes it possible to buy content when abroad, though.
From that link, I also get the impression that iPlayer still has a fairly nerdy image. The most viewed shows are a documentary about mathematics "the code" and a repeat of an episode of Sherlock; both beat an episode of Eastenders.
I don't think Sherlock Holmes is languishing in obscurity - in the last couple of years there's been a new movie adaptation and a (far superior) TV series. The original books are old enough now that they would be public domain, even in the US?