The three Holmes set in today's world.

This is sure a great time to explore new Sherlock Holmes adventures. There are currently 3 Sherlock Holmes operating in the year 2013. The BBC's Sherlock, CBS's Elementary, and (I just found out) the original, started business in 1878 Sherlock Holmes, somehow frozen and reanimated in 2011 and adventuring with his companion, James Wilson (a war-correspondant on disability due to injury from and I.E.D. in Afghanistan) in a series of novels (4 in print so far) by Barry Grant. Grants' Sherlock was frozen at the start of the first world war and is quite interested in learning everything that happended from 1914 till 2011 when he was taken out of suspended animation. Which one do you prefer, which do you least prefer? And who has your favorite Lestrade?

Haven't seen Elementary before, though the more I hear about it, the more curious I get. Hadn't heard about the novels. Might have to check them out. Whats the title of the first one?

The first volume is "The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes".

Elementary is in its second season here in the states. Their Sherlock is fun to watch, but the episodes follow the standard American detective story pattern, the trail leads to several different suspects till the final correct suspect is identified. Doyle's Sherlock of course doesn't accuse anyone to the penultimate page of each story. However, the characterizations are fun. First episode, with Joan Watson (paid sober companion) meeting Sherlock, Holmes has been standing in front of 8 television sets and mastering the ability to memorize the dialogue from all 8 at once. The little touches of Doyle are in there, as they are in Sherlock, but completely different from Gattis's take. My favorite line in Elementary is from the first episode..Watson asked how Holmes deduced a certain fact and he says "Not everything is deduceable Watson, I googled". This is a much more psychologically fragile Holmes, but just as annoying as the real thing. At least their take on Silver Blaze made a great deal of sense, compared to Doyle's original.

By the way, Sherlock's Lestrade is a competent professional, Elementary's Lestrade (seen in the second season) is a worn out Yardie who's career plummented after Holmes descended into Heroin addiction, and Grant's Lestrade is the great-great neice of the detective Holmes worked with in the 80's and 90's. Grant's Holmes of course, knew both :-).

the Grant series, to me anyway, sounds like an elaboration of '1984 Baker Street' and not a very original premise.
i guess i'll have to sample one for the collection, but i can't say i'm particularly interested in another thinly stretched Holmes attempt without the cleverness of the master himself.
i guess we'll just have to see.

Yes, much like the DIC "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century" cartoon series. Still, Grant is an accomplished writer, so there's some potential. In Strange Return Sherlock's frozen and dessicated corpse is the subject of a cell-revitalization procedure. The recovery of the whole body and the brain with its contents and personality intact was an unanticipated bonus for the researchers.

I've only seen the first season of the BBC's Sherlock so far, but it far exceeded my expectations. I'm hoping Santa will bring me season 2, and I'm also started to get interested in trying out "Elementary". You guys are adding to my curiosity about it!

I hadn't heard of that book series; sounds interesting!

Season 2 of Sherlock was great. Can't wait for BBC America to start running season 3 in the states next January.

Have started the first of Grant's 4 contemporary novels. Doing Sherlock in the modern world requires rethinking the enviornment he operates against. In the Victorian era a forensic scientist was a wonder. Today its a profession, and we rely on forensic techniques. It seems that crime is more common these days (Holmes always liked uncommon crimes) and there might well be less need for his services in his cannonical role. Grant's Holmes looks to be taking on Al Quaeda in the first outing.

I couldn't settle into Elementary, but BBC's Sherlock fitted the bill for me perfectly. I'm a huge fan of Holmes and I was worried at first as to what the overall effect would be on the characters in the 21st century, but Bond was updated so why not Sherlock Holmes, in dragging him out of foggy Victorian London into the background of the London Eye? Benedict Cumberbatch projects Holmes investigative, acid tongued genius so well, with Martin Freeman's Watson and his comic long suffering, not forgetting Una Stubbs and Mrs Hudson's quirkiness, both wonderful in their roles.

Tried watching the series premiere of Elementary a while back and couldn't get into it. Just felt too much like a cookie cutter police procedural with a consultant who just happened to be named Sherlock and be a bit off layered on top. I like police procedurals with a twist, Castle probably being my favorite at the moment, but this just didn't feel different enough given what they were drawing on.

Castle probably being my favorite at the moment

Really? What's the twist with Castle? I've tried watching it a few times and it just seemed bland. That lead was much better in Firefly where I suspect he had better writing.

The twist being the fact that Castle is a crime novelist who gets hired as a consultant to the FBI after someone tries to copycat crimes from his books. Given, its not much of a twist, but there it is.

I think Castle is brilliant and certainly shows more imagination and twist than Sherlock.Cannot comment on Elementary as it is not shown on free to air TV in the UK.

Castle often has mystery plots that are forgettable, but they also have a lot of fun and memorable ones, poking tongue-in-cheek at science fiction and fantasy fandom (Castle the character is a fan boy in many ways). There's the murder at a ComicCon-like convention (directed by Jonathan Frakes with lots of fun cameos and in-jokes), the Bigfoot episode, the vampire episode, the steampunk episode, the alien abduction episode, the time travel episode, and so on and so forth. That's not to say those things necessarily end up being the true circumstances behind the murder, but Castle often uses his knowledge of the genres to shed light on the clues.

I love the BBC Sherlock. The writers (Moffat and Gatiss) are big fans of Conan Doyle's stories and it really shows. They constantly surprise you with delicious tidbits from the canon. The episodes can be watched many times as there's always some little thing you missed.

Elementary isn't really my cup of tea. I found it so-so.

Barry Grant's books have an interesting, if far-fetched, premise of Sherlock Holmes's reanimation. The Sherlock character is interesting and Wilson is intelligent and likeable, but sometimes the writing seemed a little sloppy. Still a pretty good bedtime read.

Indeed, Grant's Holmes puts more emphasis on ADVENTURES than detection. His Holmes is elderly, philosophical (having been dead for 94 years gives you plenty to think about) and somewhat pensive, and still recovering from nerve damage to the leg, and flashbacks brought about by a much enhanced sense of smell, a biproduct of the stem-cell resuscitation process. I'm currently enjoying Sherlock Holmes and the Shakespeare Letter.

To get into Miller's Holmes, you have remember you are looking at a man who was crushed by Moriarty, had his reputation utterly destroyed (I will burn your heart out...in Sherlock...here it has happened!) and lives everyday as a drug addict facing the endless challenges of sobriety. Doyle recognized cocaine addiction as undesireable, but never conceived of Holmes reduced to an opium den state of existence. Elementary's Holmes lived there for several months at least.

We thus have, for our viewing and reading pleasure, a young Holmes, a middle aged Holmes, and an elderly Holmes, all set in the same world.

Parenthetically, its realy neat that TV's two competing Sherlocks are friends, and worked together on stage in a Frankenstein play in London, each one alternating playing Victor Frankenstein and the creature. :-}

Believe it or not in this season's Elementary, the relationship between Holmes and (Irene) Moriarty is actually being developed and extended in a gripping fashion. And Watson's determination to find a steady man is really beginning to look like John Watson's attraction to beautiful women.

RIGHT ON TARGET Last night's Elementary brought an end to a 2 season long puzzle. How would Mycroft Holmes be portrayed in CBS's take on a modern Holmes saga? He was introduced as a debonair gormet, older and more sophisticated than his brother, and not corpulent, but an internationally recognized restauranteur. He was feuding with Sherlock over Sherlock seducing his fiancee. Later he visits Sherlock in New York, and we learn that his ex-fiancee is involved in the Silver Blaze scandal...also that he was begun a sexual relationship with Watson. The producers hint that he has a dark side to him, and he grows in gravitas as a villain when it is revealed that he has been moneylaundering French organized crime money to save his business (ala Delorean). When Watson is kidnapped it becomes clear that he is privately even more involved in crime. After stunning Sherlock and making the exchange to save Watson alone, he is marked for death by the syndicate...In the last minute of the episode he asks to give his last words...these are a two word signal to Mi-6 assassins, who take out the baddies and see if their chief is O.K. After 2 years of scripts Mycroft is revealed to be......(he is the British governement)...the same character he was under Doyle's direction a century and a quarter earlier. Most satisfying.

The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes for those, like me, who went looking ...

Elementary continues to entertain as you find buried very deeply in the plot classic Doyle references. Third season is underway, Watson's "the casebook of sherlock holmes" has been shown as a computer journal (very similar to the way Sherlock has treated their Watson's blogging) though Sherlock's new investigatory companion Kitty, destroyed it for him because he was lieing about not wanting to see it. The Third Season Sherlock pitted Holmes against Doyle's blackmailing master villain from Denmark. Currently Elementary's Lucy Liu is flying to Denmark to be with her lover who is starting a new job with a Danish internet guru with the same first name.