A Study in Scarlet

"If you’ve never read any Sherlock Holmes books you really need to start with that one because it introduces this rather mysterious and romantic character. At the beginning, Doctor Watson tries to puzzle out the profession of his strange roommate at 221b Baker Street. He makes lists of what Holmes seems to know a lot about and what he doesn’t seem to know about at all – including the Copernican theory. In short, this is an introduction to a partnership and friendship that will be chronicled over 56 short stories and four novels. I think everyone needs to know the foundation of that relationship. Most of us grew up on Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in those old B movies of the 1930s and 40s. Nigel Bruce deliberately portrayed Watson as this bumbling dolt, which is very different from the Watson of the books, who is a soldier, doctor, battle veteran and an authority on “the fair sex”. Happily, the 21st century Sherlock produced by the BBC, with Benedict Cumberbatch as this very Aspergian Holmes and Martin Freeman as this vulnerable and engaging Watson, gives us a more accurate portrait of their relationship. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Watson, we know from the books, marries at least a couple of times and is a much more admirable and humane figure than Holmes. Over time, the stories show how Watson gradually humanises this thinking machine. Agatha Christie – through the mouth of her own detective Hercule Poirot – asserted that Conan Doyle’s greatest creation wasn’t Sherlock Holmes but Doctor Watson. Not really, but we do get all our information about Holmes through Watson. He is our representative in this strange household. Just as in vaudeville you need a straight man as well as a comic, so in these wonderful stories Watson has to be Holmes’s straight man. Think of all those little scenes at the beginning of each story when the pair are sitting around the fire and Holmes will suddenly notice that a visitor has left a hat or a cane and will ask Watson to make some deductions about the owner. Watson gets everything wrong and Holmes is then able to wow his friend with astonishing inferences. In one case – they’re studying an old hat – Holmes runs through all these details and finally concludes with a flourish that it is obvious that the man’s wife has ceased to love him! That example comes from the short story “The Blue Carbuncle” , by the way. You need the give and take between the two men to make the stories work. I once read that in vaudeville it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that’s the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way. It is really hard to find a good straight man, and Watson is one of the best."