Awesome Adaptations (33) - Sherlock "The Hounds of Baskerville"

Awesome Adaptations is a weekly bookish meme, hosted at Alisa Selene’s books blog, Picturemereading.  Anyone can play along! Each week there is a new category of adaptation to blog about. Any format (television series, film, web series, etc.) is acceptable as long as it is based in some form on a book. If you’re playing along on your own blog, just mention Picturemereading in your post and include the banner above. Let them know which film you’d pick and why it is an awesome adaptation worth watching. Oh, and don’t forget to share the link to your own post in the comments for that week’s challenge so that everyone can read your thoughts!

An Awesome Adaptation With Sleuthing!

Title: Sherlock "The Hounds of Baskerville"

Adapted from: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

It was hard to pick one Sherlock episode for this category, obviously because all of them are amazing, but I chose this one because it has such a brilliant mystery, and it is a complex adaptation.  So much is changed from the original story, but the idea of the original remains.  It has that horror element, that scary supernatural hound that is so expertly explained, with clues along the way to point to the correct solution.  But that solution is obscured by the scene where Sherlock sees the hound and begins to doubt himself and the mystery becomes a test of his ideology and rationality.  This episode (like all of them really) is a perfect blend of mystery and character development.

In some of the previous Sherlock episodes, there is more than one mystery to solve, and while it is a brilliant feat of adapting, I love how this episode has just one central mystery.  There are other puzzles that seem unrelated, but in the end everything comes together in a way that only Sherlock can make sense of.  This series' style of visualizing what goes on in Sherlock's head through on-screen graphics and text, creates a great moment near the end where Sherlock goes to his mind palace and starts really analyzing all the information he's gleaned.  The mind palace is an old method of storing memories, and this episode shows how useful it can still be.  And apparently terrifically useful for detectives.

This episode, with it's moody, sinister atmosphere, and a complex mystery that is made more awesome by how well Mark Gatiss can weave elements of the original story and yet create a completely new, modern version that still keeps the idea of this unshakable, haunting curse, is another brilliant example of how fantastic this show is, and how awe-inspiring a unique adaptation can be.