Dandy Jeremy

[mightymads]

From the DVD commentary (thanks tremendousdetectivetheorist on tumblr for sharing!):

David Stuart Davies (author of Bending the Willow): You managed to get him to wear a deerstalker, and he hated that, didn’t he?

John Madden (director of The Priory School episode): He did! He didn’t want to be uniquely associated with that. I think he felt it was somewhat ridiculous. Not the most elegant headgear.

David Stuart Davies: Jeremy was very fond of certain props—the walking stick and the long black scarf—which are both from the terms of the stories uncanonical, but he seems almost to be attached to that scarf most of the time. Did he say anything about that?

John Madden: I think Jeremy was a dandy. And one of the qualities that he exhumed on the character was that kind of dandiness which was really there but not necessarily something which would need to be emphasised. But Jeremy loved that, the sense of showmanship in the character. The grace and style of his mind was externalised in the way he dressed. He wanted to look good!

 

Comments

[senmut]

He made them work so well!

[mightymads]

He highlighted Holmes’s taste and style, and that was amazing!

[dreamingjewel64]

My favorite Holmes.

[mightymads]

I love him dearly too.

[brewsternorth]

I guess that's one of my fave things about his Holmes: SH always *is* a showman (Watson makes that quite explicit in SIXN), and Brett plays him as a detective who also acts. And is a snappy dresser! (And he was right, the deerstalker has been overused ever since Gillette, but there's a valid use-case for it here in a rural case.)

[mightymads]

I love that he lifted off Holmes’s showmanship from the page and accented it. The theatrical performance in SIXN, the fact that Holmes treated the detective work as his art and that as an artist he craved recognition from those whose opinion mattered to him—that’s all in the canon, and Jeremy was brilliant by highlighting it. So grateful to him for that. And yes, he could have ditched the deerstalker altogether since it is never actually mentioned in the stories, but the tradition is strong, and there are Sidney Paget’s iconic illustrations.

[rachelindeed]

I also love this aspect of Brett's performance and the Granada series in general, which took such care with costuming! He does look lovely and neat as a pin, and shows off just how good Victorian and Edwardian men's fashion could look on someone who knew how to move with it. The pin-stripe trousers! The long clean tails of his top coat! That little moment where he playfully taps his cane to the back of his top hat in order to tip it joyfully to Watson is adorable!

And it does remind me of some of the passages from Doyle as well. Watson has always been pretty up-front about the fact that vanity is a noticeable piece of Holmes's character, and although he is primarily hungry for compliments to his intellect, there is a physical side to it, too. In Musgrave Ritual, Watson says that "he affected a certain quiet primness of dress," and in Hound Watson is impressed that Holmes manages to look completely put-together despite roughing it for weeks in a hut that barely kept out the elements: "In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that cat-like love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street."

[mightymads]

There is a quote where Jeremy praises Granada for their careful approach to details. It’s such a joy to get the flavour of Victorian/Edwardian elegance through Jeremy. In the DVD commentary they mentioned that he fitted very well into period settings. Jeremy also said himself that he rarely played a modern guy. In her book Ruth Goodman mentions that period clothes make one move differently. The way Jeremy moves is an aesthetic treat to the eyes—how he lifts his tails before sitting down, how he wields his walking stick, the poise of his head when he wears a top hat—all of it complements Holmes’s image so naturally.

[natrix_natrix]

I mean, he's right: you can't fight crime if you ain't cute!

[mightymads]

As Mr. Carson of Downton Abbey eloquently put it, “If you’re tired of style, you’re tired of life.”