So D’Artagnan is a cheeky bastard, every week we get character development and shenanigans, the Cardinal and Treville rock my boat in Part 1… what else? Well, here comes the fun part.
Composed by Murray Gold. An absolute ear candy. I can’t get over it. Listen for yourself. (For complete opening title sequence, watch it on Vimeo.)
Among many of the literature adaptations that movies and TV serve to us, Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers must be one of the more prevalent ones. The most recent one came to us not so long in the past – in 2011, Paul W.S. Anderson directed a version of Dumas’ classic novel with Logan Lerman, Matthew Macfadyen, Luke Evans, Ray Stevenson, Mads Mikkelsen, Christoph Waltz and Orlando Bloom in it. Going further back, in 1993, Disney Musketeered with Chris O’Donnell, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen and Oliver Platt. So when, in 2014, BBC threw us another version of Dumas’ story – created by Adrian Hodges and entitled The Musketeers – one of my complaints was: AGAIN? REALLY?
I was ready to hate it. I went into it with no enthusiasm whatsoever. I had zero expectation when I decided to try out the first episode, out of boredom (not even curiosity!) Despite having Luke Pasqualino, whom I thought was a gorgeous eye candy from Snowpiercer, and Maimie McCoy, whom I became a fan of in Endeavour, I really had not thought to pick up this series for watching.
Oh, how wrong I was!
Instead of being bored by The Musketeers, I was thoroughly entertained by it. It’s not even the same case as BBC’s Atlantis, which entertained me through its addictive cheesiness and sheer balls for wrecking Greek mythology. I was seriously entertained by The Musketeers to the point of looking forward to it as my weekly dose of fun and recommending it to others. It’s mindless entertainment, yes, and it’s probably only half historically accurate but it’s definitely more inventive and imaginative than what W.S. Anderson gave us in 2011 with his movie… perhaps it’s precisely the lack of ‘Americanism’ in this show (it is, after all, made by the BBC) that I find enjoyable. To be fair, for being a French story, this show is lacking a lot of Frenchism as well, but what the heck. At least it feels European, instead of American, this time.
In short, this is a period costume drama with attractive people and adventurous plots in it – all the recipes for a good popcorn excitement in front of the TV. For me, that’s just wonderful! It keeps me from getting bored anyway.
Now that the show is coming to an end (season finale is on Sunday, 30 March 2014 in the UK), I’ve decided to sit down and properly think of the reasons why I like this show so much. As a result, I came up with a list of 10 reasons why I love it. My goal is to convince more people to watch it – either by tuning into it via BBC iPlayer or buying the DVD/Blu-ray that’s coming out soon. (Or, hey, torrent. I’m not judgmental.)
For reading convenience, I split the list into two parts. You are warned for ramblings, fangirling and possible spoilers in each of the points. Enjoy! And hopefully you’ll be convinced to watch the show. Continue reading
First appeared in totalfilmindonesia.com as “Mark Gatiss di Bab Terakhir Sherlock Musim Ketiga“.
Reaching the end of BBC’s Sherlock season three (S3), fans are anxious to know of what comes next for the great detective. Luckily there’s a season 4 in the works; co-creator Steven Moffat has confirmed it. No matter how long it takes to make it – as the two leading men of the show are currently busy with their own projects – fans will definitely continue to wait eagerly.
Meanwhile, we can probably wait by checking out all of co-creator and co-writer Mark Gatiss’ favorite Sherlock Holmes incarnations that inspired him and Moffat on the series.
“Our favorite was always Basil Rathbone in the films of the ‘40s because those films seemed to us to have more of the true spirit of Conan Doyle than a lot of the other adaptations,” Gatiss confesses to us via phone from Liverpool. “Having said that, Jeremy Brett was amazing; he was the definitive Sherlock Holmes for a whole generation. We love those stories well and Peter Cushing and Douglas Wilmer in the ‘60s… there are loads and loads of them. But I think the Rathbone and Nigel Bruce films are the ones that we keep coming back to. That plus the Billy Wilder’s film, The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes, in 1970. Those are the big touchstones for us.”
Mind you, though he says “favorite”, all of it comes with a bit of disclaimer… “It’s very hard to say because everybody has their favorite and people get very upset if we name someone else!”
In addition to the Guy Ritchie films from 2009 and 2011, plus the American TV series featuring the detective (Elementary), modern audiences are spoiled for choice when it comes to watching Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters in live action format. Gatiss has a good theory on the phenomenon.
“It has to be almost entirely down to the fact that the original stories are so brilliant. Arthur Conan Doyle is a genius writer, probably the best short story writer we’ve ever had. He was just a master of the form,” Gatiss muses.
He also credits Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson’s relationship for being one of the main attractions of the stories. “The characters of Holmes and Watson have endured so much because it’s one of the great friendships in literature and people always respond to that. They shouldn’t be friends but they are and that’s what makes it brilliant. I think the fact that we see Sherlock through Dr. Watson’s eyes, as it were, means that he always appears as a slightly god-like figure. And that’ an enormous part of the appeal.”
First appeared in totalfilmindonesia.com as “Mark Gatiss mempererat tali persaudaraan Mycroft dan Sherlock Holmes“.
Playing the much smarter and more mysterious older brother of a “high functioning psychopath” consulting detective must not really be a walk in the part. But for Mark Gatiss, co-creator, co-writer and actor of BBC’s highly popular crime drama Sherlock, it’s as close to an ideal job as he could get.
One of the perks of being one of the two men in charge (the other being Steven Moffat) in the show, while also also acting in it, is that he gets to “change lines at the last minute without asking anybody.”
During our conversation by phone (Total Film Indonesia was in Jakarta, Gatiss in Liverpool), the actor/writer elaborates: “At the last minute, lots of things which might be difficult otherwise can be arranged quite quickly. It’s also great because I’m there on the set every day anyway even when I’m not acting. It’s very useful to be around and make sure that everyone is fully on board with what we’re trying to do in that particular episode. One of the difficult things about filming is that, when you do things several months apart, people might slightly lose track of where they were. They might start the scene being more emotional or something and you have to keep them on track – ‘You remember the scene before this, you were actually quite angry.’ It’s good to have a complete overview of all three stories.”
But what of building Mycroft as a character? Gatiss, who is a big fan of the Arthur Conan Doyle books, has already said that his version of Mycroft Holmes took his cue from Christopher Lee’s character in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970). There’s apparently something more sinister with Gatiss’ Mycroft, as it is with Lee’s, compared to the one conceived by the author, as the character only appeared in 2 of the original stories. “As with all the characters what we’ve tried to do is give them a bigger life and background than they usually have. Mycroft was only in two of the original stories. And apart from being cleverer than Sherlock and enormously fat, there isn’t much more to it except that he is the British government,” Gatiss explains.
The Holmes brothers may not get along but Gatiss claims that Mycroft is concerned for Sherlock. “They have a much more antagonistic relationship which I think is extremely interesting,” he continues. “There is warmth there somewhere deep down but it’s much more brittle and I think that’s a great thing to play with. What we’re trying to do, as with Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, and new characters like Molly and Anderson, is to just to broaden it out a bit so you get to know these people as a family, almost.”
One of the smaller, though no less interesting, mysteries of S2’s “The Hounds Of Baskerville” (which Gatiss wrote) was when Scotland Yard’s Inspector Lestrade came to Baskerville to aid Sherlock and John Watson in their investigation. At that time, Sherlock accused him of being sent there on Mycroft’s orders as his “handler”. We asked Gatiss about working with the actor Rupert Graves, who plays Lestrade, and the story behind the accusation.
First appeared in totalfilmindonesia.com as “Mark Gatiss dan perjalanannya menulis ‘The Empty Hearse’“.
After being broadcast last January in the UK (on BBC) and the US (PBS), now Sherlock’s much talked about third season (S3) is coming to Asia via AXN Asia.
The BBC series adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective novels has a set of three writers – Steven Moffat (co-creator), Stephen Thompson (co-writer) and Mark Gatiss (also playing, as an actor, Sherlock Holme’s brother Mycroft Holmes).
Gatiss, who co-created the series with Moffat, previously gave us gems such as “The Great Game” episode (S1) and “The Hounds Of Baskerville” (S2). In S3, Gatiss continues his work as an actor and pens the opening episode, “The Empty Hearse”. Here Gatiss will attempt to solve the long anticipated mystery of Sherlock’s resurrection, to give us some answers as to how Benedict Cumberbatch’s titular consulting detective can return to the world of the living after falling off a building.
Ever since the end of S2 in January 2012, the internet has tried its best to circulate all the theories the fans can come up with and Gatiss, as the sole writer of “The Empty Hearse” will have to try hard to match the expectations that rose from those theories. But of course he has already had a plan for quite some time for the season opener.
Gatiss claims that he and Moffat have known what direction they would take for the third season ever since the second season of Sherlock.
We had a very clear idea that the main thing would be the introduction of Mary Morstan as Mrs. Watson,” he explains to us on the phone from Liverpool. “We talked for a long time about doing the story about Charles Augustus Milverton, the blackmailer, which is one of our favorites. And Steven [Moffat] wanted to do that. So we sort of knew that that would be episode 3. And episode 2 would be the wedding. And episode 1 would be the return. And I said I’d like to write it.”
First appeared in totalfilmindonesia.com as “Mark Gatiss Menguasai Dunia TV dengan 3 Acara Besar“.
It’s 2014 and your television will seek to occupy more of your time with top notch series. A couple of those coming to viewers in Indonesia are the planet’s biggest shows on TV: Sherlock (a BBC production that is broadcast in Indonesia via AXN Asia) and Game Of Thrones (HBO’s original production broadcast via HBO Asia). Some might wonder, what do these two disparate shows – one is a modern detective story and the other is a historical fantasy drama – have in common besides having hoards of fans? As it turns out they have English actor and writer, Mark Gatiss, in common.
Total Film Indonesia recently talked to the Sherlock co-creator who is about to make his Westeros debut as Tycho Nestoris, a character from the book who is a representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos, coming to collect royal debts, in the fourth season of HBO’s Game Of Thrones.
“I might be coming back later on [to GoT] but this is just brief [turn],” says Gatiss by phone from Liverpool.
Playing Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes, the actor also says that his character was inspired by the same characted played by Christopher Lee in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and decided not by Stephen Fry’s Mycroft in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011). “Stephen’s version of Mycroft is totally different to mine. There’s no need to compare, really, it’s just a different universe,” Gatiss insists. “Stephen’s a very old friend of mine and I know how thrilled he was to be asked to do it. He used to be the youngest member of the Sherlock Holmes society when he was a child. It was a dream come true for him to do it. It’s lovely to think that the world has as many Sherlocks and as many Mycrofts in it.”
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