Sleuth at work

One of my resolutions this year is to make a lot more money. But how? In fact, I’ve noticed recently, it’s very simple: all you have to do is take a popular character with enormous worldwide brand recognition (e.g., King Arthur, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes) and shamelessly reinvent him for the youth demographic.

So, for example, you dress up Dracula in Abercrombie & Fitch, emphasise the sublimated but not consummated sex angle, throw in a werewolf to complete the platonic love triangle, and suddenly you’re Stephenie Meyer selling trillions to pubescents. Or you turn Great Expectations’ Pip from a dreary cipher into a smouldering, pouty-lipped, Professor-Brian-Cox-style hunk of Boy Band gorgeousness, complete with Mr-Darcy-style sexy-sexy water scene, and suddenly you’ve made the most talked-about drama on Christmas TV. As the meerkats say, simples.

I ought to feel curmudgeonly and cross about this prostitution of our great works of literature, but strangely I don’t, for reasons all parents of teenagers or near-teenagers will understand. Once your kids reach a certain age you’re grateful for any opportunity that enables you to be graciously permitted to share their airspace for more than a few grudging seconds. A programme like Sherlock (Sunday, BBC1) may be your one chance in an entire week to snuggle next to your unloving boy without being told how lame you are or what a complete loser or how, like, totally poor you are compared with all the other families who took their kids to Barbados this year like any normal family would…

But even if Boy wasn’t a fan of Sherlock (‘He’s a psycho genius, Dad’) I’m sure I’d still be able to enjoy it quite independently because actually it’s tremendous fun. For some reason I managed to miss the first series entirely, and the more people raved about it, the more determined I grew not to watch it.