The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman

by Neil Daniels

  The writers, Moffat and Gatiss, were respectful to Conan Doyle’s creation and avoided patronising Watson. In a way, they created Watson as a hardly human character, as they did Holmes. Watson himself is a man of unfathomable intellect and enjoys his own shrewd powers of determination. He also knows how to deal with Holmes, who has a talent that most people don’t possess and a personality that many people would struggle to deal with. It’s a self-reverential show and, in some respects, it’s surprising how well the writers have pulled off a modern-day adaptation. The original stories were written over a hundred years ago but the new series has a place in the modern world. Conan Doyle feels present in the writing because Moffat and Gatiss are so respectful of his work. Freeman tried it like a new script that no one had ever filmed before.

  ‘I think you can get into a lot of trouble if you try to hang your hat too much on what other people have done,’ Freeman explained to Wales Online. ‘It’s just not your job. Those people haven’t done this script. We’re not playing the novels, we’re not playing the films, we’re doing this script by Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss.’

  Martin had not read any of the Conan Doyle stories but was familiar with the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce films because BBC2 used to show them in the early evenings back in the 1970s and 1980s when he was a teenager. As soon as he got the acting gig though, he devoured the stories. What Freeman enjoyed about the script was that it was not a comedy, yet there is much understated humour in the characters of Holmes and Watson. It’s not played for laughs by any means but there are laughs to be found. Freeman’s aim with Watson was to make him strong yet vulnerable and relatable.

  Speaking to Andrew Duncan of Reader’s Digest about Sherlock and his partner, Freeman said, ‘John Watson is very pukka and traditional and lends a moral framework to Sherlock, who’s more interested in the chase than in what’s right or wrong.’

  It was announced at the 2008 Edinburgh International Television Festival that the BBC were producing a single sixty-minute production of Sherlock. The cost of the production, as reported in The Guardian, was said to have been £800,000 and there were whispers that it would be a failure, so the pilot was not aired and, instead, the BBC requested reshoots leading to three ninety-minute episodes. The original pilot was later included on the DVD of the first series. It is almost entirely different from the broadcasted version, both in look and sound. The overall cost of the first series of Sherlock came in at a reported £1 million.

  Filming for the pilot began in January 2008, while the first series of three episodes began filming in January 2010. There is a fantastically fresh look to the series with the location and setting. Much of the filming was done in Cardiff, which proved cheaper and provided some wonderful shots for a makeshift Victorian London. The wonderful score by David Arnold and Michael Price also added richness to the series.

  Sherlock is set in contemporary London with Holmes as a consulting detective who solves cases with his flatmate and friend Watson, who has returned from military service in Afghanistan with the Royal Army Medical Corps. Holmes does not immediately win over the officers of the London Met, especially Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, played by Rupert Graves. However, in time, due to his immense intellect and powers of observation and perception, he convinces them of his worth to the police force. Watson documents his adventures with Holmes on his blog, which makes Holmes an unlikely and reluctant celebrity. His odd personal life and his eccentric character make him fodder for the British press. He is soon asked by ordinary people and the British Government for help with various cases and mysteries. Throughout the series he meets his arch nemesis and rival, Jim Moriarty, played by Andrew Scott. Holmes is also infrequently assisted on some cases by Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey), a pathologist at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Una Stubbs plays Mrs Hudson, Holmes and Watson’s landlady, while co-creator and writer Mark Gatiss is Holmes’s elder brother, government official Mycroft.

  What’s fun about the show is that Holmes uses modern technology such as texting, the Internet and GPS to help crack cases. The writers update some of the traditional elements of the original Conan Doyle stories, such as character names and certain plot devices, as well as the 221B Baker Street address and such but they also add some of their own elements to make it more contemporary and plausible.

  Cumberbatch spoke to Den of Geek about how technology aids modern policing: ‘His mode of operation is aided by technology. His speciality is deducing the facts, which means pulling together a huge, vast amalgam of information into a coherent structure. So, he can understand what he sees, and experience what the story might be, what’s not apparent to everybody.’ He continued, ‘Sometimes that catches him out. He can pre-empt things, and that can get him into trouble. He can go down blind alleys. He still, humanly, gets things wrong when he first meets Watson. He is fallible, but he completely fits in with the modern world of high tech, modern policing. He’s a man who assimilates all that information, and builds a bigger picture out of it. And that’s a very human thing to do. No machine can do that.’

  Freeman was a little dubious about the tone of the show, worrying that viewers might be overloaded with too many computers and mobile phones and other modern-day technological devices. He was concerned that they might stray too far from the original source material. He was pleased that the writers managed to achieve a balance. It’s all down to good writing at the end of the day. In fact, not even good but brilliant writing. If the script is quite good, there is a chance the episode or film can be a reasonable standard but, if the script is brilliant, it can be masterful.

  ‘It’s very much our thing,’ Freeman said to the University Observer’s Steven Balbirnie, ‘but as far as the spirit and the dynamic goes between those two characters, which is after all, really the success of the show, it’s written that way, it’s made that way, that you want to know about the dynamic of these two characters and that I think is true to Conan Doyle.’

  On a personal level, Freeman is less pleased with technology, as he told Martina Fowler of TV Choice Magazine: ‘I think the world’s too computerised. Obviously I wouldn’t go back to the fifties. I just spend a lot of time with people who should know better, who are really into gadgets. I just think, “Come on man, I know it’s clever, but you’re going to be getting rid of that in six months.” We’ve all become so acclimatised to thinking, “OK, I’m supposed to buy that now.” We’re all intelligent people, why are we going along with this?’

  Martin thinks that Watson has an understated dress sense. Holmes’s friend is often seen wearing smart casual clothes but he doesn’t have the sartorial obsession that Freeman has. The actor has admitted he probably spends more time getting ready than his partner does. He doesn’t have any grooming products but he has always loved clothes.

  Freeman flourishes in the role. He brings out Watson’s main traits: his iron-willed character, his strong mindedness, his sense of morality and decorum, his watchfulness and approachability. Watson is an alpha male. He has been to war, he knows how to kill someone, he is very intelligent and, if it wasn’t for Holmes, he’d be the most intelligent and impressive person in the room. There is a strength to Watson and, unlike Holmes, he doesn’t need to show it off. He’s an understated character.

  ‘I see very little of his performance from The Office in Sherlock,’ said Sherlock producer Sue Vertue to The Guardian’s John Plunkett about Freeman as Watson. ‘He is just the most incredible actor. Sometimes he will say, you know this line here, I think I can do that with a look. The writers, knowing what acting chops both these boys have, have given them lines they know they are going to have fun with.’

  The first episode of Sherlock, ‘A Study In Pink’, was broadcast on 25 July 2010 to great critical acclaim and high ratings, with series two broadcast in 2012 and a more successful third series in 2014. ‘A Study In Pink’ is a retelling of the first Holmes story, ‘A Study In Scarlet’, which has been recreated over seventy times. Freeman and Cumberbatch read the stor
y because they had to bring what is unique and appealing about it into a modern context and, as such, they had to understand the characters. Episode two, which was broadcast on 1 August, is ‘The Blind Banker’ and episode three, ‘The Great Crime’, was broadcast on 8 August.

  The series averaged around seven million viewers and won over the telly pundits. ‘It’s the best British thing that’s been on telly in ages,’ Freeman glowed to the Daily Telegraph’s Olly Grant. ‘Quality will out, if that doesn’t sound too arrogant. But why should I sound arrogant? I didn’t write it. I just think it was undeniably good.’

  The Observer’s critic Victoria Thorpe said, ‘Freeman’s dependable, capable Watson unlocks this modern Holmes, a man who now describes himself as “a high-functioning sociopath”.’

  ‘Mr. Freeman’s deft performance as the grouchy but loyal Watson is one of the show’s pleasures, along with Rupert Graves’s avuncular take on Inspector Lestrade,’ wrote Mike Hale of the New York Times.

  USA Today’s Robert Bianco enthused, ‘Cumberbatch turns Sherlock into an adorably aggravating blend of House, The Mentalist and Sheldon from Big Bang – while making him completely, compellingly his own. He’s aided by an equally terrific performance by Martin Freeman (the original Office) as a Dr. John Watson who is no match for Holmes’ intellect but is much his superior in social sense.’

  Freeman won a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actor in 2011. He was genuinely thrilled to win the award and to get such acknowledgment for his performance but he was also humble about it, knowing that it wouldn’t change anything. He did not develop an ego and suddenly think he was God’s gift to acting. He accepted it and moved on to his next projects.

  ‘I’d love to think that meant that people now take me seriously in a different way,’ he confessed to Digital Spy’s Morgan Jeffery, ‘but I don’t think it necessarily does. I just think it meant I was good in this show. But it’s still supportive. Best actor in a bumbling role!’

  Sherlock became one of the BBC’s most successful contemporary dramas with a global fan base. It made both leading stars household names. The great thing about Sherlock is the interplay between Cumberbatch and Freeman, which is a delight to watch. They are absolutely brilliant together. It was a simple case of perfect casting. No one else could have been seen in either role. Sherlock has been sold to 200 countries and a US version was made called Elementary, with Johnny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as Joan Watson.

  ‘Actually, I think it’s partially financial, and partially it’s cultural,’ Freeman explained to IGN Filmforce’s Ken P. as to why American series’s have more episodes than British ones. A case in point being the twenty-four-episode series of Elementary, now in its third season. ‘I just don’t think we work on that size canvas, really. And I think a lot of the time it’s the differences between the writing processes. I mean, a lot of British writers don’t like writing with other people – in the way that that’s the lifeblood of the Americans. The really, really best stuff – the best American stuff – is never just written by one person all the time, you know?’

  Martin was glad that he had finally shaken off the role of Tim Canterbury from The Office. He is very proud of the series and he has never complained about it; it brought him acclaim and success for something he loves doing but he is pleased to have moved on and that audiences have moved on with him.

  There was an instant online reaction to Sherlock where fans created websites, message boards and forums dedicated to the series. Sherlock’s fan base is a very vocal and dedicated one.

  ‘I don’t think any one of us could have dreamt that there would be that sort of reaction,’ Freeman said to the BBC. ‘Never mind online, but the entirety of the success that it has had we could never have dreamt about. People used to ask me about The Office. They would say, “Did you know it would be this huge thing?” and there was certainly no way we could of known how big Sherlock could have been. I would have settled for it being a really good show that some people really loved. But the fact that it has been feted and honoured – we could never have spotted that coming.’

  The lasting success of the new series is also down to the characters themselves created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes has been reinvented and re-imagined countless times in the cinema, TV and even comics and, of course, literature. He is one of the most famous fictional creations of all time. The original stories are also fantastically good reads with taut plots and engaging scenarios and surprise endings. The latest update is a superbly acted, directed and written series with some beautiful designs.

  What is it that makes Holmes so alluring? Why does Watson keep going back to him?

  ‘He’s a pretty magnetic bloke. He’s very intelligent and there is something mesmeric about his obsessiveness as well. He’s the cleverest bloke that John has ever met and he likes that challenge and the share of the danger as well. Because John is ultimately into danger as well, he is a soldier and a doctor so he is around situations that are perilous and a bit tasty, so he responds to that in Sherlock and he just wants to be around him – I sometimes don’t even know why!’

  Freeman had a busy schedule, but the release of a film is often dictated by the market. A small film will often sink if it is released in the summer, for example, because of its competition with Hollywood blockbusters. Thus, a film could be made one month before another film but only get a release six months later. It’s the nature of the industry: some films take months – or even years – to get made; others less so.

  ‘It honestly doesn’t feel like an increased workload as I’ve always worked a lot,’ Freeman admitted to the University Observer’s Steven Balbirnie. ‘I mean when I was twenty-three, twenty-four I worked a lot, but obviously not in things that were ever famous. At the moment I’m lucky enough to have Sherlock and The Hobbit going on, and to have those things sort of dually going on, that’s a big gig, that’s a great combination.’

  2010 also saw the release of Wild Target, on 18 June, a film which saw Freeman star as Dixon. Directed by Jonathan Lynn of My Cousin Vinny and The Whole Nine Yards fame, Wild Target is a loose remake of the French film from 1993, Cible émouvante. Filming began in September 2008 in London and the Isle Of Man and stars Bill Nighy as Victor Maynard, a middle-aged hit man who is hired by Rupert Everett’s character, Ferguson, to kill Rose (Emily Blunt) after she cons Ferguson out of £900,000. Freeman’s character is a sadistic assassin who is Maynard’s henchman. However, the story takes a turn when Ferguson asks Dixon to dispose of Maynard, the greatest hit man ever known. The film opened in June in the UK and was met with mixed reviews. It was a box-office failure and, with a budget of £5 million, it grossed half of its budget in box office takings.

  The New York Times’s A.O. Scott said, ‘The body count is high, but the murders are presented with neither the slapstick of a Blake Edwards Pink Panther caper nor the grisly shock of Quentin Tarantino pastiche. Acts of violence occur like punchlines to familiar jokes, bringing tedium rather than surprise.’

  Simon Crook wrote in Empire, ‘Lumbered with tame action and carbon-dated gags (honestly, have dead parrots been funny since Monty Python?), the cast just about charm their way out of it. Nighy’s value, but it’s a bit like watching an ITV sitcom spin-off of A Fish Called Wanda.’

  Time Out’s David Jenkins was unenthused: ‘The actors do the best with what they’re given – it’s just a shame they’ve been given so little. The script is free of either zingers or insight, the inertia of the story is constantly stalled by deviation (including a superfluous homoerotic vignette which appears to be a cheap excuse to show Grint in the nude) and entire characters – including the “baddie” of the piece, Rupert Everett – are left to fade into the background.’

  Freeman’s career veered back to the theatre, which is in many ways his natural habitat, between 26 August and 2 October 2010, when he starred in the Royal Court theatre production of Clybourne Park, written by Bruce Norris (The Pain and the Itch) and directed by Dominic Cooke (Au
nt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, Seven Jewish Children, Wig Out!, Now Or Later and The Pain and the Itch).

  Freeman adopted a Chicago accent for the role. ‘It was just so well-written,’ he elaborated to The Guardian’s Euan Ferguson at the time. ‘I started to read it not necessarily expecting to think of doing it – it’s a while out of your life, and most things I don’t want to do – but, within pages, such wit, and a real nice nastiness to it. It’s also got people of different colours, different classes, echoing things that were said by people 50 years before but about a different colour or sex or power or class – it shows how things shift, and it’s magnificent. It’s about prejudice – literally, to prejudge a situation.’

  The story tackles racism, politics and property and is set in the 1950s in contemporary America. Russ and Bev sell their two-bedroom house at a desirable, affordable price to the neighbourhood’s first black family. This creates discontent amongst the white urbanities of Chicago’s Clybourne Park. In 2009 the same house is up for sale and is bought by white couple Lindsey and Steve, who face a similar response from the locals in a mostly black area.

  The production received rave reviews. Georgina Brown wrote in the Mail On Sunday, ‘Dominic Cooke’s flawlessly performed production culminates in a contest between Freeman’s slick, white, liberal man and the super-cool, glamorous Lena (Lorna Brown, who had played the maid) to prove their total absence of prejudice by cracking the most offensively racist, sexist jokes imaginable, which, of course, only succeeds in proving the reverse. Outrageously, shockingly entertaining.’

  Caroline McGinn wrote in Time Out, ‘Above all, “Clybourne Park” makes racism personal: one reason why it walks the notoriously hard line between funny and offensive. Also, a touch of tragedy exalts and humanises the hilariously awful property rows.’

  Sarah Hemming enthused in the Financial Times, ‘The same cast play similar types in both acts and the performances would be hard to better. Martin Freeman, in particular, excels twice as the decent face of uptight white resentment, with Sarah Goldberg as his horrified wife. Provocative, troubling comedy.’