20 Things You May (or May Not) Know About BBC Sherlock
As culled from various interviews, the DVD commentaries and assorted miscellany. I tried not to go with the more obvious bits of trivia (like Benedict dyes his hair) but if you’re a hardcore fan, you’ll likely still know all of these anyway:
- Martin Freeman plays army doctor John Watson, formerly with the Royal Army Medical Corps. In real life, Martin’s grandfather was a doctor with the 150th Field Ambulance, RAMC, during World War II. Leonard Freeman was killed in a Luftwaffe attack on May 24, 1940, during the Battle of Dunkirk.
- Benedict Cumberbatch was the only actor asked to audition for the role of Sherlock, after Steven Moffat and Sue Vertue saw him in the film Atonement and Mark Gatiss, who’d worked with him on the film Starter for 10, vouched for him. Benedict’s audition was filmed in Beryl Vertue’s London flat, where she served tea and biscuits “like Mrs. Hudson.”
- (The Great Game) In the scene where Sherlock examines Carl Powers’ shoe in the lab, his solo shots were done on a separate day than the shots with John. They had to shoot part of the scene without Martin Freeman after he was injured from slipping on the icy steps of a production trailer.
- The pilot and A Study in Pink were filmed one year apart (in 2009 and 2010, respectively).
- The dog in Hounds of Baskerville was named Whiskey after Mark Gatiss’ own childhood dog. Kirstie’s pet was an homage to Mark’s husband Ian’s childhood pet, a rabbit named Bluebell.
