Yellow Peril Week – Fiendish Outrage 1 – The New Sherlock and a Bit of Yellow Peril

Sherlock Holmes – can you get enough of him, and Dr Watson? Well, personally speaking I can’t (see previous posts on Holmes and China from when the Guy Ritchie film came out – Holmes Enduring Legacy in China here and Holmes in Tibet here).The new BBC Holmes – simply titled Sherlock – is modern day with Holmes working with the Met, using texting a lot, GPS whatevers and Dr Watson just back from Afghanistan (Helmland now rather than one of them earlier British disasters over there) – it sort of works really well I think. Of course loyal North Londoners (such as this blogger) will note that 221B Baker Street is actually filmed on North Gower Street at the back of Euston station (but that’s a really anal North Londoners point there!!).

Anyway, episode 2 – Blind Banker – took us firmly into Yellow Peril territory…as a good Holmes should at some point really. And a Orientalist fest it is too (not necessarily a good thing I admit but rather watchable). However, it was quite funny to watch the ever intelligent Holmes mangle a bit of Chinese and for good old London-born Gemma Chan (gratuitous excuse for a photo below) to have to struggle through a mock Chinese accent a la a thousand Yellow Peril movies (“Chinky Chonk” we used to call it in less enlightened days and it still sounds a bit daft and nothing remotely like a Chinese person speaking English with an accent but still, Confucius he say number one son be filial…..and all that).

Still, I enjoyed it – cliches and all – so shoot me (or rather give me death by a thousand cuts!!) though I have to agree with Madame Miaow, who has long blogged on these sorts of things with much insight and hilarity, who makes two very salient points about the episode:

1) In an age when irony is everything in British TV and programmes are loaded with it (think of contemporaries to Sherlock – Dr Who, Torchwood, Being Human et al) and watched by an audience who irony awareness levels are supremely high (NB: this is Brit TV, not American) why was there no sense of it in this episode?

2) And, more to the point, where was the de rigeur Limehouse opium den basement torture scene – obviously nobody told the writers and producers that it is the law to include one of those when doing a Yellow Peril in London story.