Placing a classic story in modern times is usually about as good an idea as velvet sweat pants. The two just don’t jibe.
If they do it in opera, Romeo is usually wearing some sort of tragic “Star Trek” paramilitary uniform.
When they do it on TV, it’s usually worse.
Warning: Exception to the rule coming up!
Season 2 of PBS’s “Sherlock” — which should be horrible, young Sherlock in modern-day London — begins Sunday night. But instead, it’s brilliant.
PBS is quickly becoming the new HBO — with Sunday-night programming so smart, so compelling that millions have turned back to the pre-cable standby.
Public TV is heating up flat-screens to bursting with not just the sensational “Downton Abbey” but also series like “»Zen,” the compelling whodunit about Italian detective Aurelio Zen, starring Rufus Sewell.
Quietly attracting millions of viewers in its first season, “Sherlock” is about a modern-day Holmes — with requisite sidekick Dr. Watson (Martin Freeman) — solving the same crimes that he solved way back when.
Of course, you can’t have modern Sherlock traveling in parlor cars and smoking a pipe, which is now considered the greatest crime of all. But they get around it.
Played seamlessly by Benedict Cumberbatch, this Sherlock has a computer brain to go along with his real computer, and probably also has Asperger’s syndrome. He is brilliant, analytical and socially unconscious.
Each week, the series takes on a Holmes classic, updates it, turns it on its ear and leaves you breathless.
Not a classically handsome guy, Cumberbatch makes himself extra unappealing with his insults and asexuality.
Well, that is until Sunday night when “A Scandal in Belgravia” debuts, pitting Holmes against Irene Adler, dominatrix extraodinaire who has been whipping a royal into shape. Maybe.
OK, stop laughing. In the original “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes matched wits and wistful longings with another Irene Adler, the singer mistress of the King of Bohemia, probably based on the singer Lillie Langtry, the lover of Edward, the Prince of Wales.
Brilliantly written, with acting to boot tonight, Holmes is nearly outwitted and feels his first urges of lust with Adler, played by Lara Pulver of “True Blood.”
Coming up, retakes of the classics, “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” and “The Reichenbach Fall.”
Because the Brits tend to have more restraint about these kinds of things, there are just three episodes this season.
Oh, and Holmes’ asexuality aside, Cumberbatch’s legions of female fans are more Adler than acquiescent.
In fact, they call themselves Cumberbitches. Really.