144
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
ambiguities. If these tabloids are meant to be newspapers that Magnussen
owns, then his journalists are subverting the neoliberal attitudes of the
owner, and his cold, controlling genius is rather comically undermined
by his copy-editors’ questionable competence. If they are meant to be the
publications of his rivals, one almost feels a twinge of sympathy for Magnussen’s papers: presumably, they will be better produced and more coherent
than the patchy journalism we have been shown.
Rather than being an ideological attack on Johnson and the Conservative
party, as the Mail reads it, I suggest that with this comic opening to the
episode, writers Thompson, Gatiss, and Moffat are providing additional,
knockabout material to reward attentive, engaged viewers. The priority is
to entertain rather than provide cohesive arguments. Rather like a clown
or a comic jig at an Elizabethan playhouse, its “meaning” is expressed in
its liminal status, half in the fictional world, and half out of it (that is,
occurring prior to the title sequence, in a storyline concerning peripheral
character Greg Lestrade).
Courting engaged viewers through added value
This willingness to push against the show’s own formal intentions (to portray
Magnussen as a master manipulator) in pursuit of a joke for attentive viewers
shows how important such engaged (or, to borrow Shari Laster’s term,
“privileged”) audiences are to Sherlock’s lead writers. 41
In this respect then, Sherlock is certainly not antithetical to or dismissive
of its fans. From the beginning, it has offered the engaged viewer a transmedia viewing and reading experience. John Watson’s blog, which featured
in the show, was a real blog accessible online, as was Sherlock’s own blog
in the series, “The Science of Deduction.” Both offered supplementary
material to the televised cases and suggestions of Sherlock and John’s
broader casework, which viewers have not seen. They also, of course,
provide a digital analog (as it were) for the dismissive way in which Holmes
responds to Watson’s recording of their cases in the Conan Doyle stories,
and an insight into both characters’ Weltanschauung. Additional contextual
color to life at 221B Baker Street is also provided by the official spin-off
book, Sherlock: The Casebook, containing notes supposedly passed between
Sherlock and John. 42
41 Laster, “The Reichenbach Feels,” 226.
42 Adams, Sherlock: The Casebook.
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
ambiguities. If these tabloids are meant to be newspapers that Magnussen
owns, then his journalists are subverting the neoliberal attitudes of the
owner, and his cold, controlling genius is rather comically undermined
by his copy-editors’ questionable competence. If they are meant to be the
publications of his rivals, one almost feels a twinge of sympathy for Magnussen’s papers: presumably, they will be better produced and more coherent
than the patchy journalism we have been shown.
Rather than being an ideological attack on Johnson and the Conservative
party, as the Mail reads it, I suggest that with this comic opening to the
episode, writers Thompson, Gatiss, and Moffat are providing additional,
knockabout material to reward attentive, engaged viewers. The priority is
to entertain rather than provide cohesive arguments. Rather like a clown
or a comic jig at an Elizabethan playhouse, its “meaning” is expressed in
its liminal status, half in the fictional world, and half out of it (that is,
occurring prior to the title sequence, in a storyline concerning peripheral
character Greg Lestrade).
Courting engaged viewers through added value
This willingness to push against the show’s own formal intentions (to portray
Magnussen as a master manipulator) in pursuit of a joke for attentive viewers
shows how important such engaged (or, to borrow Shari Laster’s term,
“privileged”) audiences are to Sherlock’s lead writers. 41
In this respect then, Sherlock is certainly not antithetical to or dismissive
of its fans. From the beginning, it has offered the engaged viewer a transmedia viewing and reading experience. John Watson’s blog, which featured
in the show, was a real blog accessible online, as was Sherlock’s own blog
in the series, “The Science of Deduction.” Both offered supplementary
material to the televised cases and suggestions of Sherlock and John’s
broader casework, which viewers have not seen. They also, of course,
provide a digital analog (as it were) for the dismissive way in which Holmes
responds to Watson’s recording of their cases in the Conan Doyle stories,
and an insight into both characters’ Weltanschauung. Additional contextual
color to life at 221B Baker Street is also provided by the official spin-off
book, Sherlock: The Casebook, containing notes supposedly passed between
Sherlock and John. 42
41 Laster, “The Reichenbach Feels,” 226.
42 Adams, Sherlock: The Casebook.