For months now I have been hearing about the new BBC Sherlock series on the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes Yahoo! group "Letters of Mary". Well, I finally decided to follow up on it but found that the you tube channel which had been archiving episodes had been pulled. So that left plan B. I pulled out FlashGet3 and hit the torrent sites. I managed to find all three episodes and get them in HD. Even compressed, the quality is great! Any way, all three episodes are fantastic! Each episode takes pieces of original Conan Doyle cannon and weaves a modern version of the story: "A Study in Pink" ~= "A Study in Scarlet", "The Blind Banker" ~= "The Dancing Men", "The Great Game" combination of "Bruce-Partington Plans" and "Final Problem". I can't wait till PBS shows it here this October!
Holmes and Watson are now more casually Sherlock and John. Holmes's penchant for sending telegrams has been replaced by cell phone texting. John is an Afghanistan war veteran (it's amazing how that worked out!). Mycroft is decidedly sneaker - tries to bribe John into spying, probably more a test of character than anything else. John is constantly flirting with the ladies, but except for Sarah who interviews him for a job at a local NHS clinic, is always being turned down. Watson's alcoholic brother has been replaced by John's lesbian alcoholic sister. We finally learn what happend to Mr. Hudson - the late husband of John and Sherlock's landlady (not your housekeeper!) - Sherlock made sure some charges for murder in Florida stuck.