Former friends turned enemies – an irresistible trope (at least for me)

Last week was exhausting, which means I'm a bit late with my blogging. Even now, I'm reaching for the easy option blog-wise. Instead of explaining why Pixar's Hoppers is really watchable and not at all the simplistic "Man the Destroyer" fable I had feared (my least favourite cliché or trope, together with "Eat the rich", and "Who are the monsters here"), I'm going to write about Young Sherlock on Prime.

There's no shortage of films or TV projects that want to hitch a ride on the Sherlock train without having much – if anything – to do with the great detective as described by Arthur Conan Doyle. I've mentioned these Holmesian rip-offs a number of times: the Guy Ritchie movies, the Enola Holmes atrocity (I never did watch the second film), The Irregulars on Netflix. Young Sherlock is undoubtedly the same kind of thing. And yet, as with The Irregulars, I ended up enjoying the series on its own terms, even if it is far from "the spirit of the original". 

I'm not going to go into the matter of why Holmes's good name keeps getting exploited again, as it's well-trodden ground. Instead I'll concentrate on another aspect of the series, the irresistible hook that kept me watching even though the banter of the first couple of episodes was pretty tired. In Young Sherlock, we see the future detective teeming up with an Irish Oxford undergraduate called – drum roll – James Moriarty.

Predictable? Yes. Wonderfully inventive? Not really. But it doesn't need to be. I'm a sucker for a story showing how the hero and his arch-enemy used to be friends. It's why I once sat through an enormously long film (which I think was meant as a TV series, something the DVD I rented did not make clear) called Neverland. It's why I've started to watch the TV series Smallville, in spite of having zero investment in the Superman universe (I'm admittedly only two episodes in, but so far Lex is being a great pal to Clark). It's why Master episodes in Doctor Who appeal to me, in spite of The Master being a bit too chaotic a villain for my liking. The friends-turned-enemies trope is "You and I are not so different" and the hero-villain team-up rolled into one, and I love it.

Admittedly, it could be more cleverly done than in Young Sherlock. You have to ask yourself why a Holmes-Moriarty team-up is so appealing when Holmes isn't behaving noticeably like Holmes and Moriarty isn't behaving noticeably like Moriarty. This Sherlock mostly resembles the Guy Ritchie movie version of Sherlock Holmes in his youth, which makes sense as Guy Ritchie directed some of this TV show's episodes as well. Young Moriarty is charming, full or Irish blarney and has some unscrupulousness about him, but there's little hint of a future criminal mastermind at work, or for that matter a future Mathematics Professor. They are less two geniuses trying to think their way to a solution to their problems, and more two boisterous young men who get into scrapes.

There are some hints that these are bright young lads, admittedly, and that they are uniquely on each other's wave length. While we don't get scenes where Sherlock fires off brilliant deductions like it's nobody's business, we do see his power of observation, illustrated by time slowing down while he takes in all the details in a scene or a room. Intriguingly, we see Moriarty joining him in these moments, while he follows the same trains of thought. He is the only one who can enter young Sherlock's "mind palace" (to borrow a concept from BBC's Sherlock).

All in all, though, the show's main charm comes not from any impressive detective work on the part of the protagonists, but more from being a ripping yarn. I was a little doubtful during the first episodes, but when the series switches focus to an unsolved mystery from Sherlock's childhood, the plot thickens and becomes more gripping. However, there's no prizes for guessing who the ultimate Big Bad is (not Colin Firth's blunt Empire builder, no), and the motivation of at least one important character remains something of a mystery. 

This is not the kind of show that makes you feel clever for watching it. But if a 19th-century caper involving two bright hotheads, a female Chinese assassin, a former asylum inmate who (naturally) turns out not to be mad at all and the stiff straight man trying to keep some control over the situation sounds fun to you, you could do worse than giving Young Sherlock a watch. After all, Conan Doyle himself appreciated a good adventure story.                      

Ballet Shoes: The first "shoe" book, and the best (probably)

What to do when a book post is due, but you go through your self-indulgence reads much faster than your slightly more ambitious ones? Try to write about the self-indulgence reads, of course – not that that's necessarily easy, especially when it's a classic like Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes (yes, her name is spelled like that: Kathleen in You've Got Mail got it right).

Recently, I tore through Streatfeild books like a maniac, starting with a reread of the Gemma books (sadly out of print) and then moving on to other old favourites. Ballet Shoes was the book that started it all, and the reason a number of Streatfeild books were reissued with shoe-related names like Theatre Shoes (originally Curtain Up), Skating Shoes (aka White Boots) and my favourite marketing tour de force, Travelling Shoes (for Apple Bough). As far as I can make out, this ploy started during Streatfeild's life time, so she must have approved, though I can imagine her being quite sardonic about it.

Anyway, it only makes sense to profit from the goodwill of Ballet Shoes. It is a classic for a reason, and sets the tone for many of Streatfeild's subsequent books that deal with similar themes and, to some extent, characters. Nana in Ballet Shoes is pretty much the same character as Hannah in Curtain Up/Theatre Shoes and Nana in White Boots/Skating Shoes, though they are supposed to be different women, and as late as in the Gemma books Lydia Robinson's single-mindedness when it comes to her dancing is reminiscent of Posy Fossil's.

Ballet Shoes, then, is very much the place to start if you want to try Streatfeild. Rereading it as an adult, I'm gripped by it in the same way as when I first read it (or rather, had it read to me) as a child. Or perhaps not precisely in the same way: you dive into a fictional world more whole-heartedly as a kid, while your adult self can't help being a little more analytical. Not necessarily more critical, mind you, but instead of just accepting the magic you nod and think "that was pretty well thought-out".

When I was a child, the lives of the three adopted Fossil girls with their different talents seemed like sheer wish-fulfilment. What I notice as an adult is that these kids work hard. There's precious little leisure in their lives even before they start earning money, at the age of twelve. The genteel poverty also hits home a little more forcefully. As a child, I was apt to groan "what, again?" when new audition frocks were needed; it didn't seem so many chapters ago that Pauline got a new one and everyone had to be ingenious in order to drum up the money. What I'd plain forgotten was that all of poor Petrova's birthday money is spent on those new frocks – and she doesn't even like stage work.

Dare I say it, the three girls seem to work quite a bit harder than their guardian Sylvia aka Garnie who, though very sweet, is rather a passive character. Yes, she runs a boarding house, but she is helped by a cook and maid and (the unpaid) Nana. As for any decision-making, it's up to Nana and the incredibly helpful boarders. I understand better now why Sylvia feels guilty about accepting the girls' money, and why she was saddled with a chest complaint in the TV adaptation of Ballet Shoes, in order to make her more in need of looking after.

Luckily Pauline and Posy Fossil take to acting and dancing respectively and consequently don't mind the hard work. The arrangement is toughest for engine-obsessed Petrova, who doesn't enjoy her time at The Children's Academy for Dancing and Stage Training run by Madame Fidolia one bit. Here, the old childhood magic holds, though, because I still think Madame Fidolia's Academy sounds absolutely wonderful and can't really pity someone for "having" to go there. 

Both in Ballet Shoes and in Curtain Up, the conceit that the child protagonists "have" to enlist at the Academy in order to make money grates a little. Yes, in both cases, two-thirds of the enlisted children soon feel at home, but they're not allowed to join simply because they want to go on the stage. It riled me as a stage-struck child and it riles me still. (I may get back to Curtain Up in the future; I think I could fill half a blog post with ranting about how the clearly talented and imaginative Mark gives up stage life for nonsensical reasons, encouraged by his sister who should know better.)

Is Ballet Shoes Streatfeild's best book? That's debatable: after all, it is her debut book, and in later books her trademark humour and Streatfeildisms are more in evidence (candidly revealing what the characters actually think rather than what they're supposed to think). White Boots is in many ways a more complex story, what with all the intricate plots the grown-up characters think of in order to keep the friendship of Lalla and Harriet intact. However, you can't beat Ballet Shoes when it comes to the atmosphere and set-up: whether in the Academy or in the Fossils' ramshackle home, this is a fictional world you want to spend lots of time in.