literary memories

When I was little, in my early teenage years, I discovered the powers of deduction when I read the first Sherlock Holmes story. I don't know which one it was and how I came across it, but I got hooked. Shortly thereafter I discovered the local library.

In its catalog, though very rarely on its shelves, was a Sherlock Holmes omnibus in five volumes. For months I must have come every week to see if another volume was available to borrow. From those early adventures in a historical, fictional and at that time utterly unattainable London, I recall Hansom cabs, the Strand and trips to the countryside. My personal version of the myth of London was born. (What strikes me now is that the Underground never featured.)

After finishing high-school I worked as a driver for a charity for a year. Rides came and went, and there was much spare time. I learned French from a CD course and started reading books in English. The international bookstore in Dresden had a Penguin edition of Sherlock Holmes; I dove straight in and read through it in a snap. The book was an even bigger delight than the German translation I had read earlier and opened my eyes to the joys of language.

It's not that Doyle was a master of the written word. He was a master storyteller full of invention and imagination. But his stories dated from a different age, and the language showed it. Victorian English fascinated me with its closer ties to German, with numbers where the tens come before the units (as they do in Arabic, oddly enough) and curiously inverted verbal constructions.

Reading made me think about linguistics without being aware of it. The only thing I realized at the time is that I had a lot of fun with the books. At some point, Holmes and Dr. Watson stepped out of the pulpy pages and became close acquaintances, almost friends. I knew exactly what they would look or be like.

Maybe that's the reason that I've never – honestly, never – seen a Sherlock Holmes movie or TV series. One look at the screenshot in the TV guide or a glance at the trailer would tell me that the two protagonists had nothing in common with the two men I adored. The latest big-screen hit was Guy Ritchie's effort, hilarious and breathtakingly over the top, but why did he cast Watson as Holmes and Holmes as Watson? And why would I watch such half-cooked nonsense?

I didn't, but then along came the BBC. Last week they started a three-episode mini-series that transpose the adventures of the greatest of all detectives into modern-day London, black cabs, text messages, Chinese take-out and all. The casting looked all right, but then there is no point arguing authenticity when the action is translated a hundred years into the future.

At the danger of displacing painstakingly constructed mental landscapes with quickly moving pictures, I sat down and broke with a tradition: I watched Sherlock Holmes on screen. I've now watched the second part; it can't be that bad. And it isn't: The action moves rapidly, there are great one-liners, the maestro and his side-kick are acceptable, and some of the supporting characters positively hilarious. The science of deduction can be seen at work.

There's one more episode to come, and I will watch it. And yet, and yet – I can't get wholly enthusiastic about the show. It seems that they started with the concept, with the set, with the supporting cast, and some of the jokes. Into this framework they lowered Holmes and Watson to solve cases that betray poor logic and come along as if tagged on when the rest was done, as if by afterthought. This Apple-esque form over function, with plenty of eye-candy but little substance that holds up to scrutiny, is turning the structure of the books on its head and makes a mockery of the narrative brilliance that Doyle possessed. The films are completely different from the stories, but maybe that's precisely why I can stand them. They won't displace any treasured memories, acquired decades ago.