In Mr. Holmes, directed by Gods and Monsters’ Bill Condon, it’s 1947, two years after the end of World War II. Dr. Watson has long since left to marry. Sherlock isn’t in Victorian London anymore. Instead, the famous consulting detective, now 93, is in Sussex, living on a seaside farm where he tends bees when events prompt him to try and remember his last case, the one that made him retire. He wants to record it before he loses his faculties, but the facts have become hazy.
Playing an older Sherlock seems like the perfect fit for British actor Ian McKellen, perhaps best known to today’s audiences as Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films and as the mutant villain Magneto in the ongoing X-Men franchise. “Well, I’ve been preparing all my life because I’m now 76 years old, so I’m closer to 93 than I’ve ever been before,” McKellen told National Public Radio. “I just imagine that I’ve got more physical inconveniences, and then it all seems to work.”
The reviews have been quite encouraging. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+, saying “McKellen excels, switching effortlessly between the reclusive beekeeper with a faltering memory and the elegant younger detective at the height of his powers.” The Sydney Morning Herald, seemingly in agreement, boasts the headline: “Ian McKellen magnificent as Sherlock in close to perfect story.”
While McKellan, who has been acting in film, theater and television for more than 50 years, is so highly regarded in the UK that he was knighted in 1991, his turn with fellow greats Derek Jacobi and Frances de la Tour in ITV’s high-camp sitcom Vicious — about a caustic and snobby gay couple joined in their contempt for each other — hasn’t been as well received. Mr. Holmes might be his way of showing that he’s still got it and will never lose it, even though The Telegraph deems the picture “perhaps a little too gentle for Cumberbatch fans.”
Of course, those who prefer a more contemporary version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved character — including viewers who like the hit movies starring Robert Downey Jr. and even the CBS show Elementary, which finds Watson gender-swapped into Lucy Liu — should be thrilled to know that the BBC’s Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman will return for a one-off 90-minute Christmas special in 2015.
“The special is its own thing. We wouldn’t have done the story we’re doing, and the way we’re doing it, if we didn’t have this special. It’s not part of the run of three episodes,” states Sherlock writer Steven Moffat. “It’s kind of in its own little bubble.” A fourth season of three new episodes follows in 2016.
It seems perfectly timed that, along with the theatrical release of Mr. Holmes, comes news that 221 Baker Street, Sherlock’s fictional London home — or at least the block where it would have been situated — has become the subject of an ownership riddle.
“Investigators say that the government should force companies behind property deals to disclose who their owners are, amid fears that the world’s most notorious criminals are using exclusive British addresses to hide their dirty money,” reports the UK’s Express. The calls come after anti-corruption campaigners claim that huge swathes of the prime central London property, close to Regent’s Park, is linked to a former secret police chief accused of murder and money-laundering.
It’s a mystery that Sherlock Holmes, whether in his prime or in his twilight years, would have easily solved.