The BBC’s “Sherlock” is believed to have pleased even the most fervent Sherlock Holmes fans, yet “The Abominable Bride” episode caused a serious amount of friction within the series fandom. To escape numerous stereotypical trappings, the creators of the show offered a modernised setting, and thus not only did they transcend the Grand Game but also made the show an instant transcultural success. Deciding to place Sherlock in his “original” surroundings in the Christmas special, they fell into the trap of their own making, since their own text became one of the adapted ones. References to the Canon and its adaptations were the driving force throughout the three series, but the amount of auto-referentiality was a step backward as far as the viewers and “gamers” are concerned.
After years of treating Doctor John H. Watson as a faithful but not-that-clever friend and chronicler of Sherlock Holmes, recent revisions finally offer a character closer to Doyle’s version. Since each reworking of the great detective calls for a reworking of the diarist doctor, this paper aims to analyse contemporary Watson’s counterparts – literary: Carole Nelson Douglas’s Irene Adler has her Penelope Huxleigh, Neil Gaiman’s consulting detective his “S_ M_,” and cinematic: Gregory House has his James Wilson, and the Whitechapel DI Chandler his Edward Buchan. Each rewriting retains some features of the canonical sidekick through which the new character reflects on the original.
Despite the title reference, the BBC’s Ripper Street (2012‒2014) was not intended as another Jack the Ripper story; the infamous killer’s absence is acutely felt in its first three seasons, though. The paper examines the way his acts are being recalled for the characters and viewers, but also reconstructed in a performance and copycat murders, and how, even though the Ripper is long gone, people may become his victims. The absence as echoed in the series plot and setting is a commentary on both the Victorian and modern fascination with the unsolved case.
The paper discusses one of the latest revisions of Doctor Jekyll’s dark side, Mr Hyde, as depicted in a graphic novel by Cole Haddon and M.S. Corley The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde. The text is a sequel to Stevenson’s novella and sets his character in 1888 during Jack the Ripper’s autumn of terror. What makes it stand out among other adaptations and appropriations is the combination of a Victorian and a modern villain – Edward Hyde and Hannibal Lecter, as well as giving voice to a Victorian police detective – a character that was ignored by the majority of nineteenth-century writers.
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