TV Cracks Da Vinci Code

We know that whenever someone says the name Leonardo Da Vinci, rounds of doves and explosions burst forth from the aether, and women everywhere feel an insurmountable urge to drop their tops, but what if we want a deeper exploration of the man behind the action? Leonardo's story was wrapped up in secret societies and sexual intrigue and soon two new TV shows take a contrasting look at the artist, writes The Independent's Sarah Hughes...

He is the most famous artist of all time, an inventor, mathematician, painter and engineer. Now two very different programmes hope to present a different side to Leonardo da Vinci, the man behind the myths. Later this month, Sky Arts' innovative documentary Inside the Mind of Leonardo, featuring Peter Capaldi, will use Leonardo's surviving notebooks to lay bare his thoughts on everything from hair dye to war weaponry. And in April, Da Vinci's Demons, an epic historical fantasy featuring a young and dashing Leonardo and written by David S Goyer, the writer behind the new Superman film, comes to Starz and FOX UK.

After successfully making ancient history come alive then get all greased up and sexxxy with shows like Spartacus and Camelot, the US cable channel hopes to do the same for the Renaissance with the forthcoming series. Like those other shows it will be part history lesson and part smutty-yet-entertaining bullshit, exploring the "untold story" of Leonardo's "raucous youth" as he gallivants around Florence, a 25-year-old artist, dreamer, thinker, and frequent casual sex-haver.


In a press release announcing the eight-episode series, Starz representative Carmi Zlotnik said, "If modern day has Tony Stark, the Renaissance has Da Vinci" — and if that sounds like a dumbed-down analogy that just caused a thousand history professors to spew chamomile all over their tweed, it’s at least apropos, considering the man shepherding the project is Goyer, who also wrote Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, as well as the upcoming Man Of Steel. Goyer even compared da Vinci’s "near-mythic" legend to that of Batman and Superman, and expressed excitement over the opportunity to explore his origin story—and if there’s one thing we know about David Goyer, it’s that he really, really loves origin stories. Goyer also said the show would be about "secret histories, genius, madness, and all things profane," and on that last point he also expressed gratitude for being allowed to do it on Starz, "where the story can be as dark and challenging and irreverent as it deserves to be," and also show boobs sometimes.

Goyer's Leonardo is, he admits, very different from the white-bearded man many of us picture. "Obviously we deal with his art but we also present him as a bit of a prototypical investigator, a little bit Sherlock Holmes, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Iron Man's Tony Stark… He's a man of action and the whole story is wrapped up in a lot of history, secret societies and sexual intrigue," he says, admitting that when he was first approached: "I said if you want a dry, historical biopic I'm not your guy… but if you want something that kind of reinvents history and presents it with a broad canvas and broad strokes filled with dashing characters and darkness I'm that guy. They said, 'Yeah we want that'."

The finished product has been kept tightly under wraps until its April premiere but extended trailers suggest a lavishly detailed take which falls just on the right side of enjoyable hokum, anchored by a sardonic performance from British star Tom Riley, who appears to spend a fair amount of time with his (suitably chiselled) chest on display uttering such glorious lines as "Perhaps you've heard of me… I am an artist, an inventor and an engineer."

Adding to the intrigue, this Leonardo is entangled in different ways with two women, both of whom are equally out of bounds: his patron Lorenzo de Medici's wife Clarice Orsini (Lara Pulver) and Lucrezia Donati (Laura Haddock), who just happens to be Lorenzo's mistress, while Riley admitted in a recent television interview that the show will tackle Leonardo's relationships with and feelings for men. "I can't reveal too much because it's a major plot point but we were never going to ignore that side of his life," he said.

"There are all sorts of controversies regarding his sexuality, most people think he was bisexual," says Goyer. "If people want to come for the history they'll get that but if they're fans of Lost or Spartacus or Game of Thrones then they'll like it as well. We've taken liberties, this is a historical fantasy, we're not saying it's the truth – in fact one of the tag lines for the show is 'history is a lie', which is us being deliberately cheeky."



If Da Vinci's Demons gives us a Leonardo who is all swords and smouldering, Inside the Mind of Leonardo takes a more pared-back approach in the hope of showing the audience the inner workings of an incredible mind. "I think there's an enduring fascination with the beauty of his mind," says James Hunt, Sky Arts' director of programming. "Genius is a laboured and over-used word, but it truly applies here."

Ignoring the traditional documentary approach, the show does away with re-enactments, voiceovers and even expert talking heads. Instead, Capaldi reads from the notebooks while a variety of effects, from animation to 3D, bring those words to life. There are no costumes, no sense that Capaldi is Leonardo no matter how beautifully he reads the words, but rather a stripped-down approach that presents the mind behind the drawings in an intriguingly fresh way. "Every single word is the voice of Leonardo," says Hunt. "It doesn't seek to answer everything just lets his works stand for themselves and allows you to see them a fresh way."

Both shows tap into our ongoing fascination with Leonardo, who continues to inspire almost 500 years after his death in 1519. In The Beginning Was the End, the latest production from the innovative theatre company dreamthinkspeak currently showing at Somerset House, was inspired by the apocalyptic Leonardo sketch A Cloudburst of Material Possessions and uses the artist's ideas about hydraulics as part of a hallucinatory piece about the nature of change in a fast-paced world. In 2011, the National Gallery's Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan was the fastest-selling show in the gallery's history. In part, the frenzy was fuelled by the fact that so few of Leonardo's paintings survive – a notoriously slow worker, only 15 paintings are attributed entirely by him.

One review of the National Gallery exhibition described him as "a visual thinker who painted part time". His appeal lies in the fact he is all things to everybody: to doctors he is an anatomist; to scientists an inventor and engineer; to fans of conspiracy theories and Dan Brown novels, a code creator or breaker and possible spy.

"He is extraordinary, there is no other cultural figure with his reach," says Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of history of art at the University of Oxford, who served as a consultant on the Sky Arts documentary. "That's partially down to the inherent complexity and suggestiveness of his work which offers an enormously complex set of possibilities, the idea that you can find your own image in them as it were. But the major thing is that he crosses all these territories: he is a doctor, an engineer, a geologist, an artist, and a scientist. There's nobody else thinking in this way until the late 18th century. He captures a very wide range of interests and that's what people find fascinating."

Every generation has re-created Leonardo in their own image, refracting his accomplishments through their eyes. "These days we see him as a celebrity," says Kemp. "Once you see the drawings and the paintings it's impossible to remain unaffected," says Kemp. "It doesn't matter how much background knowledge you have, or how little, those works have something else, a sheer living intensity. It's uncanny, I wouldn't like to be in a dark room alone with them, there's a sense of presence that goes beyond mere pigment."

Most interestingly Leonardo always stood apart. "There was an infinite grace in all his actions; and so great was his genius, and such its growth, that to whatever difficulties he turned his mind, he solved them with ease," wrote Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists first published in 1550. "The fame of his name so increased, that not only in his lifetime was he held in esteem, but his reputation became even greater among posterity after his death".

It helps that Leonardo remains at best half-known. "He led a pretty mysterious life," says Hunt. "It was strange and not altogether straightforward and so much about it is disputed. You can't help but play detective because every painting is almost a detective story and nobody is ever absolutely certain. There's an enigma which adds to the allure."

Goyer agrees: "Intriguingly for someone like me there are a lot of gaps in his history," he says. "There's about a four or five year gap from the time he was 27 or 28 until the time he was 32 where there's almost no record of what he was doing, yet this is a person whose life up to that point and after that point was incredibly well-documented. As a creator those gaps in history are gold…"

It's the same sense of mystery that permeates the artist's most famous painting, the half-smiling Mona Lisa, about whom the 19th-century critic Walter Pater aptly wrote: "She is older than the rocks among which she sits… the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea." The mysterious Leonardo resists easy characterisation. He too remains both old and new, a symbol of Renaissance glory, of a wideness of vision that, as Kemp says, "provides a counterpart to the manic narrowing of our minds today" and yet also a thoroughly modern figure, a dabbler in many trades, who could create both the helicopter and the automated bobbin winder.

Inside the Mind of Leonardo airs on 24 March at 9pm on Sky Arts 2 HD and Sky 3D; Da Vinci's Demons starts on 12 April on Starz. In the Beginning Was the End, Somerset House, London WC2 (somersethouse.org.uk) to 30 March
Read more on this article...

Licence To Thrill

"I am Our Lord's chosen instrument to whip the devil out of you, and I have to do my duty no matter how much pain it causes me. So be prepared to drink your cocktails standing up for a few days."

Actress Lara Pulver, who had viewers' pulses racing with her nude scene in Sherlock, is to star as a real-life Bond girl. The 32-year-old, whose roles have also included appearances in BBC1's Spooks and Robin Hood, will portray the wife of 007 creator Ian Fleming in Sky Atlantic's upcoming biopic. The drama - which has the working title Fleming - will see Dominic Cooper play the James Bond creator and former naval intelligence officer. Pulver will play Ann O'Neill, an elegant Baroness whose wartime meeting with Fleming alters the course of the rest of their lives. "I am thrilled to be playing Ann, a real life high society siren worthy of Fleming's finest fictional femme fatales," said Pulver. "In extraordinary times Ann had the ear of politicians as powerful as Churchill and counted artists like Lucian Freud among her friends, yet was consumed by a torrid romance with the great Ian Fleming; a twisted and passionate love that would last the rest of their lives."

Fleming had many girlfriends but seems never to have been in love until he met Ann O’Neill, née Charteris, during the war. To give some idea of the complexities involved, he was staying with her when her first husband, Lord O’Neill, was killed, and was asked by her to break the news to the man who was to become her second husband, Esmond Harmsworth, later Rothermere. It was Fleming’s inaction which led to Ann marrying Rothermere, but after the war Ann and Ian slowly and tormentedly realised their mistake, if that is what it was, and married in 1952. It was on honeymoon, ensconced in their Jamaican retreat, that O'Neill proved decisive in making him sit down and get on with his long-contemplated task of writing a book, Casino Royale. They were married for 12 years until Fleming's death in 1964. The part may prove to be another saucy role for Pulver as a key component of their union seemes to have been a shared love of spanking and sexual role-play. "I am Our Lord's chosen instrument to whip the devil out of you, and I have to do my duty no matter how much pain it causes me. So be prepared to drink your cocktails standing up for a few days," he wrote in a letter to her.


The spanking wouldn’t matter to anyone now, notes John Lanchester, if it didn’t show up in the Bond books, but of course it does. Simon Winder, the editor responsible for republishing all the novels has said simply and robustly that Fleming was a sado-masochist. "This is a sensible way of dealing with the profoundly unsensible sexual attitudes in the novels," states Lanchester. "It is not anachronistic to find the erotic climate of the novels strange and distracting, since plenty of people were distracted by it at the time. Christopher Hitchens quotes Fleming’s friend and neighbour Noël Coward on the subject of Honeychile Rider’s world-famous bottom, 'almost as firm and rounded as a boy’s': 'I know we are all becoming progressively more broadminded nowadays but really, old chap, what could you have been thinking of?'" In a way, we are now better placed to see the sexual attitudes of the books for what they are, part of the wish fulfilment in which the Bond novels bask, in which KGB agents disguised as English gents expose themselves as impostors by ordering red wine with fish, and tough dykes called Pussy Galore secretly long to be converted from sapphism by our cruelly handsome hero. "The contrast between the real woman Fleming loved, complicated and demanding and grown-up as she was, and the wank-fantasies of the novels, must have been deeply embarrassing for Ann, and it is no wonder that she disliked Bond as much as she did," says Lanchester.

Of course, sado-masochism permeates the whole atmosphere of the Bond books. It is easy to forget until re-reading them just how often Bond gets beaten up, how long he spends recovering from it, and how a woman is usually involved in the recuperative process. The strongest currents of feeling in the novels always circulate around these sequences. "It would be an exaggeration, but not all that much of an exaggeration, to say that the Bond novels are at heart a series of lavish beatings strung together with thriller elements," reasons Lanchester. "The first of these beatings is the most famous – that’s the one in Casino Royale where Bond sits in a chair with a hole cut out of it and has his testicles thrashed with a carpet beater – but not one of the novels is without its scene of Bond in torment. The tenderest, most yearning word in Fleming’s lexicon is 'cruel'.

Also cast in Fleming is Annabelle Wallis (Pan Am, The Tudors) as Muriel, a young girl who catches Ian's eye, and Lesley Manville (Vera Drake) as the author's mother Eve. Ian's brother - the celebrated travel writer and war hero Peter - will be portrayed by Hellboy's Rupert Evans, while Samuel West (Mr Selfridge) will play director of naval intelligence Admiral John Godfrey - who shaped Fleming's portrayal of Bond's boss M. The final cast addition is Anna Chancellor (The Hour), who will play the Admiral's secretary Lieutenant Monday - one of Fleming's inspirations for Miss Moneypenny. Fleming will be shot on location in the United Kingdom and Budapest in early 2013 and will transmit on Sky Atlantic HD later this year.

Looking further ahead, and perhaps inspired by Ann O'Neill, Pulver has said that she would love to reprise her risque role as whip-smart dominatrix Irene Adler in Sherlock. Pulver's role in series two episode 'A Scandal in Belgravia' saw her dress up in S&M gear, and strip down to nothing, as her character engaged in a sexually charged battle of wits with the famous detective. It concluded with Adler facing an ambiguous future. "The response has been quite enormous to be honest," Lara told AccessHollywood.com, referring to how fans have taken to her Sherlock character, who entranced Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes. When asked if she would go back, Pulver teased: "Absolutely… if the potential is there for the character to return. She is alive. He did save her. Then, it would be an absolute pleasure to return."

Pulver was romantically linked to Cumberbatch last year, but swiftly took to Twitter to insist that they are just friends. She famously had some very intimate scenes with Benedict in Sherlock and she said filming those helped them grow closer and create the chemistry between the two actors on the show. "When you’re having to be that intimate with someone, barriers just come down because you’re having to trust that person, you’re having to feel very safe in their presence. And he was such a gentlemen and having just done 'Frankenstein' himself on stage, where he’d been butt naked, with Jonny Lee Miller… he was extremely sympathetic as well to the process," Lara told Access. "So I’d say we have a lovely chemistry and a lovely rapport and a relationship where we might not see each other for a few months and we get back together and it’s just like old friends."

Her character's profession necessitated that nude scene, a first for Pulver. "It was a closed set. I had on just shoes, earrings and lipstick," she says, at first self-conscious of her lack of clothes. "It was no mean feat for me to shoot for eight hours being naked. But then something goes on in your head that changed the whole dynamic," says Pulver, who realized, "'I'm naked, but I have all the power.' It's a device for her to gain control over the most intelligent man she's ever met. It was like a game of chess. Sherlock has never met his match in that way; there have always been other things preoccupying his brain. On the list of one to ten, sex has been at the bottom." Pulver prepared by shopping for corsets and whips and doing research, mostly online. "If anyone had got a hold of my computer the week before we started I would have been in prison," she laughs. "My future lovers will benefit for sure."

In the meantime, Pulver will play Clarice Orisni in Starz’s highly anticipated Da Vinci’s Demons this April. She is the devoted wife of Lorenzo Medici, the patron of Leonardo Da Vinci in the reimagination of the life of the famed artist and inventor. "She is a dutiful wife who is very pro-Florence, a shrewd politician and… she is the woman behind the throne," she said of her newest character, a sort of Renaissance-era Jackie Kennedy. "She is never going to undermine her husband, and yet you get these lovely nuggets in later episodes of just seeing them in their day to day lives and realize these two people care and love each other deeply, and she will do whatever she can to accommodate and allow for him to progress and to allow Florence and the family to flourish." With Leonardo (played by Brit Tom Riley) being driven, sometimes impulsively by his creativity and insatiable quest for knowledge, Lara’s Clarice will have to step in to quiet the wild genius. "We get a couple of moments where she almost trying to keep him in check. She has a mission and she has a vision, which conflicts slightly with his free thinking, ambitious, wayward mind and she just wants to keep him on track and she’ll use her femininity," Pulver said. "I think, actually, to a certain degree, she’s the most challenging character that he meets because he can’t use his natural charm with her because she’s a shrewd business woman."

Da Vinci’s Demons premieres April 12 on Starz
Read more on this article...

BBC Defend Cheeky Entertainment

BBC executives "thought very carefully" before including the pre-watershed nude scenes in Sherlock that drew so many complaints, but decided to go ahead because the drama is "cheeky entertainment", according to controller of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson. Speaking about the Sherlock footage of actress Lara Pulver, who plays dominatrix Irene Adler, Stephenson said he "sort of expected" complaints would be made. "We thought about it very carefully, we had lots of conversations about it," he confirmed. "Just because it's pre-watershed doesn't mean it has to be dull. You actually saw more of Benedict Cumberbatch than Lara. Sherlock is cheeky entertainment that takes risks like having text on screen."

In the New Year's Day episode, A Scandal in Belgravia, Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes meets his match in the form of Adler, who is naked when they first meet. However, thanks to the camera angles and Pulver's carefully placed arms and hands, viewers do not see her completely naked (although those with a sharp eye and a pause button can find a little something if so inclined). Pulver told the Radio Times this week that she found the role "really empowering".


Stephenson said that the complaints would be taken seriously but pointed out that about 10 million people watched the show and that it had high audience appreciation scores. He also warned those same fans they will have to wait at least until next year for more episodes of the hit show. When asked when the Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss-penned drama would be returning, Stephenson declined to answer and went on to say that viewers would have to wait for Sunday night's final cliffhanger episode of the current run to see why. Sherlock fans had to wait 18 months between series one and two, and have already been asking for more episodes. But the schedules of the cast and writers, the demands of the complex scripts and quality look of the show mean a fast turnaround is not possible.
Read more on this article...

Empowerment In Nudity

Lara Pulver, whose recent role as an (occasionally naked) whip-wielding dominatrix in BBC1's Sherlock prompted more than 100 complaints from viewers, has proudly admitted that she filmed the controversial scenes entirely in the buff. The actress said there was something "really empowering" about her role in the New Year's Day episode of the hit drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, before revealing the intricacies of filming a nude scene for television in an interview for the new issue of the Radio Times.


"A Scandal in Belgravia" involves Irene Adler, a high-class dominatrix whose career providing "recreational scolding" has left her in the possession of compromising photographs of a young royal. Sherlock is given the job of getting the photographs back but finds himself competing for this MacGuffin with mysterious American bad guys and the confusing effects of an unprecedented attraction to Irene herself, a woman who wields a riding crop like a master but is herself more turned on by cerebration. "Brainy's the new sexy," she whispers huskily to Sherlock, exemplifying the old sexy by entering the room stark naked.


"They give you a self-adhesive bra that sticks to you and ... imagine a sanitary towel made of tan Lycra, but with wire through it so it cups the underneath of you. And Louboutin shoes," said Pulver. "Paul McGuigan [the director] very sweetly said to me, 'OK, the choice is we spend hours shooting it to avoid seeing straps or we take all that off and shoot it quickly.' I thought I couldn't put myself through being there all day, practically naked anyway, so I might as well get completely naked and get it done in a few hours."

She admitted: "I have never felt so vulnerable in my whole life and in feeling that vulnerability it unleashed an inner power. I thought, 'OK, I'm naked, I'm exposing everything, you can't hide behind Spanx, you can't hide behind a dress.' It's like, 'I'm completely naked, what of it?' There is something about being a woman and being naked that's great and I thought, 'Let's just celebrate that'".

Asked by her co-star Una Stubbs, who plays Sherlock's landlady Mrs Hudson: "So you took it all off?" Pulver replied: "Yes ... There's nothing to hide behind, no mask, and something really empowering takes over." Pulver added: "Martin was naked in Love Actually. Benedict is always naked – he was naked on stage in Frankenstein – so I was just joining the club. It was like, 'Let's all just get nude and do Hair The Musical!' Martin said a few things but they were harmless. They were both supportive and by the end of it I wouldn't move on to the next line until Benedict had stared at my boobs!"

In contrast, she jokes that co-star Freeman was nothing but trouble during the scene when she confronted the pair naked. She says the Office actor was even nicknamed Martin Freehands for his over-attentiveness to her as they filmed. "Martin is always naughty. 'Martin Freehands' is so true. He was like, 'Oh, there she is. She's naked and there's her arse crack and off we go... '"

The actress said she bore similarities to her TV alter ego, who flirted with Holmes while wearing only diamond earrings, lipstick and heels, and went on to strike him across the face with a riding crop while perched suggestively on a chair- although Cumberbatch has only got himself to blame for moaning that she whacked him too hard! "Benedict said, 'It's all right, Lara, you can hit me harder," Pulver told TV Biz. "I was like, 'Oh can I now, Benedict Cumberbatch?' Imagine how many whips I am going to receive in the post now!" In truth, she suggests, there are 'huge elements of the characters that are us'. "But I don't go around whipping people. And I'm not a lesbian," she told the magazine.

Adler is, it turns out, a follower of the blog and something of a fan, so she and Sherlock are able to flirt over unsolved enigmas. Her nudity is a mind-game, not a desperate bid for attention. The teasing eroticism of Sherlock and Irene's affair is solely one of the mind, yet the BBC still received more than 100 complaints about the pre-watershed scenes. Pulver, whose credits also include True Blood and Spooks, said the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories was a hit because it did not "underestimate people's intelligence". She added of the detective: "I think he has so much going on in his genius brain that he doesn't even think of women as sexual beings. A beautiful woman could walk past him naked – as I did – and it doesn't register."
Read more on this article...

Is Sherlock Sexist?

In Steven Moffat's hands the power of Irene Adler, Sherlock Holmes's female adversary, was sexual rather than intellectual and represents a regressive step argues The Guardian's Jane Clare Jones...

The instant Irene Adler's scarlet-tipped fingers extended across the frame on Sunday night, it seemed certain that Steven Moffat's rewriting of Sherlock Holmes's famed female adversary would cause some consternation. The series opener of Sherlock – watched live by almost 10 million people – updated Arthur Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia, the short story in which Holmes is, unusually, outwitted by an acute American adventuress in possession of a compromising picture of the Bohemian king. The woman Holmes referred to as "the woman" was remade by Moffat as a high-class dominatrix saved only from certain death by the dramatic intervention of our hero. While Conan Doyle's original is hardly an exemplar of gender evolution, you've got to worry when a woman comes off worse in 2012 than in 1891.

In many ways the Holmes stories are a perfect fit for Moffat's skill-set. The puzzle-box plotting, the 24/7 bromance, the fetishisation of "masculine" reason over pesky "feminine" emotion, all suit him right down to the ground. In the case of his stewardship of Doctor Who, Moffat's tendency to write women plucked straight from a box marked "tired old tropes" (drip/scold/temptress/earth mother to name but a few), and his consequent failure to sketch a compelling central dynamic between the lead and his companion, has seriously affected the show's dramatic power. But no such trouble with Sherlock.


Doctor Who has never just been about a dashing alien who happens to be wicked smart. The Doctor cares about stuff, and uses his considerable noodle to fight injustice, tyranny and exploitation. By contrast, Holmes is in it for no reason other than Reason. An insufficiently stimulating case will be summarily dismissed as "boring". A Scandal in Bohemia opens with Conan Doyle sidelining feeling as "grit in a sensitive instrument", a spanner in the works of the world's "most perfect reasoning and observing machine". Unlike Who – where, famously, the evil of the Daleks is linked directly to their rejection of human emotion – Conan Doyle paints a hyper-rational universe almost made just for Moffat.

In this context, what Moffat would do with Adler was always going to be interesting. From a certain perspective, Conan Doyle's character is something of a "proto-feminist", a woman of great intellect and formidable agency, who, above all, proves to be a match for Holmes. It's not unproblematic that both author and protagonist respect Adler only because she has a "soul of steel" and "the mind of the most resolute of men". She's not a waste of space, it is suggested, because she escapes the weakness of her sex and can act, symbolically, as a man. But, importantly, she makes her own way in the world. In the climactic scene of Conan Doyle's story, emotion initially leads her to betray herself, and – like all women – when confronted by danger, she protects the thing she cares about (which, according to Holmes, is invariably either babies or jewellery). However, after these events, having had time to reflect coolly, Adler realises she has given herself away and plans the escape by which she gets one over on Holmes.

However, even this ambiguous portrait of female power proved too much for Moffat to stomach. Granted, he allowed her to keep her smarts. But, at the same time, her acumen and agency were undermined every which way. Not-so-subtly channelling the spirit of the predatory femme fatal, Adler's power became, in Moffat's hands, less a matter of brains, and more a matter of knowing "what men like" and how to give it to them; of having them by the sexual short and curlies, or, perhaps more aptly, on a nice short leash. Her masterminding of a cunning criminal plan was, it was revealed late in the day, not her own doing, but dependent on the advice of Holmes's arch nemesis, James Moriarty. A move that, blogger Stavvers noted, neatly reduced her from "an active force to a passive pawn in Moriarty and Holmes's ongoing cock-duelling".

More troubling still, Moffat's Adler blatantly fails to outwit Holmes. Despite identifying as a lesbian, her scheme is ultimately undone by her great big girly crush on Sherlock, an irresistible brain-rot that leads her to trash the security she has fought for from the start of the show with a gesture about as sophisticated – or purposeful – as scrawling love hearts on an exercise book. As a result, Moffat sends Adler out into the world without the information she has always relied on for protection, having made herself entirely vulnerable for the love of a man. Lest we haven't got the point yet, Holmes hammers it home. "Sentiment," he tells us, "is a chemical defect found in the losing side."

It is, agrees The Independent's David Newbury, just one more example of modern TV pandering to antique gender stereotypes; women merely adhering to sexual, motherly or whimsical paradigms. Although Arthur Conan Doyle’s character is steeped in Victoriana Stephen Moffat’s remake updates the franchise in every respect, except women who are dismissed as inferior vessels of emotion. Thus, Irene Adler uses her sexuality rather than intellect to match Holmes, even going as far to use her body measurements as a code as if her personal geography ends with her skin, her only asset to exploit. Her final downfall is emotion opposed to a methodical flaw, a relationship of love not respect. Adler used nakedness as her weapon to intimidate, cagoule and exploit, yet we didn’t see Moriarty’s all and sundry swinging brazenly at the climax of series one to suppress Sherlock. Probably because he’s a man and can rely on his brain?

Intelligent professional females continued to be belittled through seduction: Molly Hooper the shy pathologist is swallowed in a schoolgirl crush whimsy by Sherlock’s presence, and the therapist in episode two is chatted up and plied with wine by Watson who emotionally comforts her for information. Mrs Hudson, the housekeeper (has anyone had one since 1923?) and de-facto mother, panders to her role in society by taking the Adler’s phone to her bosom, as if nursing a child, to protect it from the baddies before being rescued, by a man. It’s as if both Holmes and Watson are carved from stone-age man. Sherlock doesn’t bother to learn Watson’s girlfriends names and the doctor himself keep protesting “we’re not gay or ‘owt, honest guvn’r”. I didn’t even think they were, two friends live and work together, so what? Some of my best friends are men, the rest are women believe it or not.

And so back to that jaw-dropping finale, continues Jones, which somehow managed to smoosh together a double-bill of two of patriarchy's top-10 fantasies. All those troubled by female sexual power – or the persistent punctuation of orgasmic text alerts – were treated to the sight of the vamp laid low, down on her knees, about to have her block knocked off by a great big sword. And, at the same time, our hero miraculously appeared to save his damsel in distress. Medusa and Perseus, Rapunzel and her prince, all wrapped up in a potent little bundle. Symbolically speaking, it was really quite impressive. But for those of us crazies who like to think that women are, y'know, just regular human beings, it was, politically, really quite regressive.
Read more on this article...

BBC Stands Proud Over Nude Scenes

The BBC will not edit out nude scenes from the new series of Sherlock when the hit drama is repeated from 7pm this weekend on digital channel BBC3, despite more than 100 complaints from viewers. The footage of actress Lara Pulver, who plays dominatrix Irene Adler, led to criticism from the Daily Mail for showing the scenes before the 9pm watershed. Sherlock was broadcast on BBC1 over 90 minutes from 8.10pm on Sunday. By Wednesday morning, the BBC had received 102 complaints about Sherlock, relating to inappropriate scenes broadcast before the watershed.


In the New Year's Day episode, A Scandal in Belgravia, Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes meets his match in the form of Adler, who is naked when they first meet. However, thanks to the camera angles and Pulver's carefully placed arms and hands, viewers do not see her completely naked. The BBC said that when Sherlock airs from 7pm on Saturday night on BBC3 these, which went out before the watershed on BBC1, the scenes will be aired in full. A spokesman for the BBC said that due to the bank holiday it could not tell when the complaints had been made, or how many came before and after the Daily Mail story.
Read more on this article...

Sherlock And The Case Of Pre-Watershed Nudity

The Daily Mail started the new year in typically cross fashion this morning, lamenting scenes of pre-watershed nudity on BBC1's Sherlock on New Year's Day. "It's a mystery that Sherlock Holmes himself might struggle to solve – how could the BBC think that these scenes were appropriate for a pre-watershed audience?" the Mail asks of BBC's hit show, which pulled in a bumper 10 million viewers for the first episode of the new three-part series. But was the paper so outraged by the scenes that it declined to illustrate its story with a big blow-up picture on page 9? Think again.

Families settling down to watch the Corporation’s latest Sir Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation were shocked to see actress Lara Pulver – playing the great detective’s romantic interest Irene Adler – strolling around with no clothes on a full 25 minutes before 9pm complains the Mail. The character had already been shown wearing a thong and carrying a whip as she walked into a room containing a woman tied to a bed. Almost ten million watched the New Year’s Day episode of Sherlock, which was based on the 1891 short story A Scandal In Bohemia.


The first of three new episodes of the series, which swaps the 19th-century setting of the original tales for modern-day London, was shown on BBC1 from 8.10pm. In the most shocking scene, Miss Pulver wore only diamond earrings, lipstick and heels as she flirted with Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. After perching suggestively on a chair, Miss Pulver – whose updated version of Miss Adler works as a dominatrix – went on to strike him across the face with a riding crop. She later tampered with the detective’s phone so that new text messages were announced with a sensual moan.

Viewers yesterday complained that the BBC had gone too far with the raunchy scenes, which were screened in an early-evening holiday slot to maximise ratings. One wrote on Twitter: ‘Dominatrix?! Watershed anyone? My ten-year-old was watching that.’

Another said: ‘I don’t think the storyline in Sherlock is pre-watershed suitable.’

A third asked: ‘How was Sherlock on pre-watershed with that slut walking round with no clothes on for most of it?!’

The BBC insisted that the scenes were not too racy for the timeslot. A spokesman said: ‘We’re delighted with the critical and audience response to the first episode, which has been extremely positive, and have received no complaints at this stage.’ The episode, titled A Scandal In Belgravia, attracted an average audience of 8.75million, peaking at 9.5million. Series co-creator Steven Moffat said he had given Holmes an overtly sexual sparring partner to scotch speculation about a homosexual undercurrent to the relationship between him and Dr John Watson, played by Martin Freeman.
Read more on this article...