And so ends 2012, a packed year for BBC Sherlock and for
Sherlockology itself. It's the close of our first full year of
running the website and all the connected social accounts, and
'full' is certainly the right word when looking back on the past
twelve months.
2012 started with a bang of course on January
1st with the world premiere TV screening of A Scandal in Belgravia. While we had seen the
episode a few weeks beforehand at its first public screening at the
BFI, it lost none of its impact when translated to the small
screen. In the days before the television broadcast of The Hounds of Baskerville though we attended a
BAFTA screening of the episode in Cardiff, which featured a Q&A
session with Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and
Sue Vertue. Although every episode of Sherlock is cinematic, Hounds
in particular really was at its best in a darkened room on the big
screen, (with Sherlockology members hiding underneath their seats
during the lab scene with John) while the Q&A demonstrating
again the Sherlock team's passion and dedication in faithfully
adapting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work for the modern world.
And after all that build up, the three episodes were over, and
we were left to ponder another cliffhanging mystery for an unknown
amount of time - but this one was far more devilish that what had
closed out The Great Game. Sherlock's survival at the conclusion of
The
Reichenbach Fall sent both the media and online fans into a
near meltdown of speculation, exactly as was intended. And breaking
the water tight layer of secrecy, Steven Moffat revealed on Twitter
immediately after the episode had finished screening that we would
indeed be getting a third series of Sherlock - it had been greenlit
at the same time as series two, allowing them to construct this
incredibly fiendish ending from the very beginning of production.
From then on, Sherlock series two began to roll out across the
globe, with some territories getting to see it far sooner than
others, but with all asking the same thing - "How did Sherlock
survive?" The Reichenbach Fall's narrative also inspired an
underground movement that sprung up online and began to seep out
into reality - the infamous 'I Believe in Sherlock Holmes' meme,
with posters and graffiti popping up on walls worldwide, and
nowhere more prominently than the
exterior of St Bart's Hospital itself...
The success of Sherlock series two January also saw a glut of
other events. Most memorably, we were invited to attend The Sherlock Holmes Society Annual Dinner in
Westminster, where we heard Steven Moffat deliver a speech of
incredible verve, humour and heart. In fact, Steven's ability to
deliver a 30 minute after dinner speech with no notes, but
seamlessly pack it full of laugh out loud quips, anecdotes and the
story behind how the series came to be, left us thinking what a
great pity it is he only has time to work behind the camera instead
of in front of it.
We also had our first meeting with composer Michael Price, who
gave a superb and in-depth demonstration of the music construction
of Sherlock to a group of students at the BFI.
Away from Sherlock itself, it was announced in early January
that Benedict Cumberbatch would be joining the cast of the latest
Star Trek film, something that caught nearly everyone by surprise.
It would take until the end of the year for any clear look at him
in the film, though a series of leaks of onset photos and video
through February revealed that he would be playing the film's
villain, thus igniting a new seam of speculation that has still yet
to be quenched. And for us, January also saw the start of
nominations for the Shorty Awards, which - from their own blurb -
'honour the best of social media, recognizing the people and
organizations producing real-time short form content across
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Foursquare, and the rest of the
social web.'
The public voting lasted through February, with us winning the
top spot of the fansite category. That saw us invited to attend the
awards ceremony in New York City in March, and to our surprise and
delight we won the Shorty Award for Best Fansite 2012. If you told
us back in May 2011 - when we launched our Twitter account and thus
everything that would eventually spin out of it - that we'd find
ourselves on a stage at The Times Center in New York collecting an
award for our work that people had voted for... we simply would not
have believed you.
Also in March we took part in The
Second Great Sherlock Holmes Debate, following on from the
success of Sherlock series two and pitting it against Sherlock
Holmes: A Game of Shadows. The debate's purpose was to raise
support and increase awareness for The
Save Undershaw Preservation Trust and help them reach their
10,000 Facebook 'likes' target before the judicial review in May to
save Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's former home. The month also saw the
first of our many trips to see cast members from BBC Sherlock on
stage with Mark Gatiss' irrepressible turn in The Recruiting Officer at the Donmar
Warehouse.
As well as all that though, we'd been working on delivering the
content for series two on our website almost as soon as it had
finished broadcasting on UK television, including an epic eight
mile walk across London finding the new locations, many hours on
Google identifying props and wardrobe, and even pinging emails back
and forth between the crew on the series. We eventually launched
the new look Sherlockology in early April, and were overwhelmed
with the response.
April was the month for awards nominations. We'd been pushing
Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2012 TIME 100 Poll with a fan created
poster campaign #VoteBenedictToWin since late March, and thanks
to all his fans he placed 7th in the public vote - the
highest positioned actor in the public poll, not only above the
likes of George Clooney and Angelina Jolie but also the President
of the United States, Barack Obama, leading Benedict to comment:
"Apparently I beat the leader of the free world. How do you
like that? It's ridiculous. I'm slightly flattered. It might be an
alphabetical thing. It's crazy. It's really crazy. (A friend
joked), 'Are you running for president?'" Though he didn't win
a placement on the final poll in the print magazine - that position
going to counter-culture group Anonymous - Benedict's mere
appearance on the poll was remarkable, and indicative of the
passion of his growing fanbase.
Sherlock also picked up three nominations for acting in the
series at the 2012 BAFTA Television Awards this month, with
Benedict Cumberbatch nominated for Best Actor, while Martin Freeman
and Andrew Scott went head to head in the Best Supporting Actor
category. We also launched another fan poster campaign #VoteSHERLOCK4BAFTA
, to try and get Sherlock to win the YouTube Audience Award - after
it lost out to The Only Way is Essex in 2011, but come the awards
themselves in May Andrew was the sole nominee to take home a BAFTA statuette, while Steven
Moffat received a Special Award for his work in television writing,
presented to him by Benedict and Matt Smith. The Sherlock team were
greatly touched by the huge effort fans had put into the public
vote, as producer Sue Vertue told Sherlockology, "We really
liked all the posters. [Sherlock fans] couldn't have done more for
the YouTube Audience Award. Thanks for all the support."
Steven Moffat recieves his BAFTA Special Award from
Benedict Cumberbatch and Matt SMith, while Andrew Scott won won
Best Supporting Actor, presented by Helen McRory.
May saw further success, but of a historical nature. The long
fought campaign to save Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's home of Undershaw
in Surrey from redevelopment scored a crucial victory in the High
Court on May 30th. That day also saw the publication of
Sherlock's Home: The Empty House, a collection
of fan submitted short stories and writing edited by us in support
of the campaign to save the property. While the legal wrangles
continued throughout the year and are of course continuing, this
was the first and most significant victory on the ongoing road to
securing the property for the nation. Earlier in the month Sherlock
finally launched in the United States, and saw a significant press
tour by PBS that had Benedict, Steven and Sue Vertue travelling the
country promoting the series across a variety of venues - including
a stint on the Marvel Comics Podcast that saw Sherlockology
name dropped at the conclusion, to our near-chair-falling-off
surprise.
June was a quieter midpoint in 2012, where the National Theatre
began redistributing Danny Boyle's award winning production of Frankenstein to cinemas worldwide, allowing new
audiences to compare the multi faceted performances of Benedict and
Jonny Lee Miller in their alternating roles of creator and
creature, and we paid our first visit to Undershaw . July was a different story, with
Martin Freeman attending San Diego Comic Con alongside other cast
and crew from The Hobbit in the first major promotional push for
the film, following the wrap of principal photography on July
6th - though it was of course later revealed that
additional filming would be required in 2013. One day this month
saw one of the most hectic days of the year for us, starting with
seeing Benedict perform a reading of John Osbourne's play Look Back in Anger on stage in London, before a
mad sprint home to take part in a highly enjoyable online webchat hosted by the Radio Times as
part of their Sherlock week. Though his appearance on stage was a
one off, other Sherlock cast began longer runs in the theatre in
July, with Louise Brealey appearing in the comedy Birthday at the Royal Court, and Una Stubbs
performed as part of the ensemble of the National Theatre's hugely
successful adaptation of novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time. July closed with the start of the 2012 Olympic
Games, which completely dominated life in the UK for their duration
into August - but they began with Benedict being afforded the
honour of introducing the BBC's coverage on the night of July
27th.
Benedict popped up on UK screens again in August, in his
starring role in the major BBC/HBO mini-series Parade's End. Adapted by Tom Stoppard from Ford
Maddox Ford's novel, the five part drama set at the turn of the
last century featured incredible performances from the entire cast.
The series debuted on August 24th, the same day that we
made a trip to Edinburgh to hear Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, Sue
Vertue and Andrew Scott give an insightful talk about the creation
of Sherlock at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television
Festival. But while there, we got the first proper tease for
Sherlock series three - three words that were spoken aloud by
Steven, Mark and Sue that hint at possible story threads for the
future.
"Rat, Wedding, Bow"
Sue Vertue, Andrew Scott, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss
pick up one of two awards for Sherlock at the Media Guardian
Edinburgh Internation Television Festival on August 24
2012.
Through September the first proper hints of official Sherlock
merchandise began to be revealed, and in conjunction with BBC Books
and Ebury Publishing we revealed the first exclusive looks at the
tie-in book Sherlock: The Casebook. A wall calendar and a
Sherlock version of popular board game Cluedo were also listed for
release, and all eventually made it out to retailers in October.
Early October saw a packed out panel at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, where Benedict
was interviewed by Louise Brealey on the subject of Sherlock
Holmes, and also his life and career as well. Mark Gatiss also made
his second appearance on the London stage in October, appearing as
King Charles I in the astounding production of new play 55
Days. But even while he was performing at the Hampstead
Theatre, Mark had one last Sherlock surprise up his sleeve for
2012. Announced in the middle of October and taking place on
11th November, The Game Is On: An Afternoon with Mark Gatiss &
Friends was the first event dedicated to BBC Sherlock itself
that featured cast and crew in attendance. Mark was joined by
Steven, Sue, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves and Louise Brealey, and
all fielded questions from fans online and in attendance with
incredible humour and grace. November also saw our final theatre
trip of 2012, to see Louise in a challenging and chilling
interpretation of The Trojan Women.
Mark Gatiss hosts The Game Is On alongside Martin
Freeman, Rupert Graves, Louise Brealey, Sue Vertue and Steven
Moffat on November 11 2012.
December proved to be an apt bookend to the year as a whole,
featuring both Benedict and Martin exploding onto cinema screens
worldwide, while Andrew Scott received his first star billing in a
television drama in The Town on ITV in the UK. The debut of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey saw Martin
at the forefront of a film that has thus far financially
outperformed any instalment in the now classic Lord of the Rings
Trilogy, while we finally received our first proper glimpses of
Benedict's villainous turn in the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness, due out in May 2013.
In both cases, it struck us as a little odd to see the pair of them
projected so large - in our case, the five storey tall screen of
the BFI IMAX in London - but that scale was also indicative of the
success that they are deservedly receiving. In July 2010, Sherlock
was an unknown quantity, not least by us. As we said last year, we
were flabbergasted by the success we had had from the germ of a
small idea when we conceived Sherlockology, success that we never
intended or expected. Though it's very different and in a
completely different league for these two leading actors, both
Benedict and Martin are now receiving a marked change in their own
careers, and that has been the thing we've noticed grow throughout
2012. Both they, the other cast and the crew of Sherlock have gone
from strength to strength over the last twelve months as we have
followed along reporting on them, and going into 2013 this will
doubtless only continue to grow - not least as Sherlock series
three enters production fully in March.
And we, as we have for the past twelve months, will be looking
forward to following the story of this remarkable series and all
associated with it in the year ahead.
From Team Sherlockology: Jules, Emma, David and
Leif
Happy New Year!