The Development of a Young Detective: The Adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes into a Modern-Day Consulting Detective in BBC’s Sherlock

This thesis analyses how the character and stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle have been adapted in season three and four of the BBC’s Sherlock and how the character of the detective develops throughout these two seasons. This analysis was performed through the lenses of both Adaptation Theory (Hutcheon, Joyce, Kline) and Character Studies (Eder, Jannadis & Schneider, Redmond), in order to achieve a complete picture as to how the character of Sherlock Holmes was adapted from Doyle’s stories and further developed for the television series. This study, first critically explores the stories and the character of Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories and how the detective handles the situations in which he finds himself as well as how he interacts with other characters. The second chapter studies the development of the character of Sherlock throughout both seasons of the series, with an emphasis on season three, as well as explore the cases Sherlock gets involved in, since they are...Show moreThis thesis analyses how the character and stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle have been adapted in season three and four of the BBC’s Sherlock and how the character of the detective develops throughout these two seasons. This analysis was performed through the lenses of both Adaptation Theory (Hutcheon, Joyce, Kline) and Character Studies (Eder, Jannadis & Schneider, Redmond), in order to achieve a complete picture as to how the character of Sherlock Holmes was adapted from Doyle’s stories and further developed for the television series. This study, first critically explores the stories and the character of Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories and how the detective handles the situations in which he finds himself as well as how he interacts with other characters. The second chapter studies the development of the character of Sherlock throughout both seasons of the series, with an emphasis on season three, as well as explore the cases Sherlock gets involved in, since they are starting to bleed into his personal life. The third chapter focuses on season four of BBC Sherlock, in which the character of Sherlock and his relationships completely overshadow the cases, shifting the series towards the genre of melodrama. The series is compared to the content of Doyle's stories throughout all chapter in order to explore how the creators of the television series adapted the Victorian Holmes to a twenty-first century Sherlock.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

The Development of a Young Detective: The Adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes into a Modern-Day Consulting Detective in BBC’s Sherlock