Lesson 1. TV-series "Sherlock" (BBC)

Type of the lesson: English practice

Age of students: 19-20 (3rd year students)

General topic of the unit: Art and entertainment

Topic of the class: Cinema

Goals of the class: develop listening and speaking skills, and the ability to express personal opinion of the topic, learning new words.

Goals of the activity: reading and listening comprehension.

Dear students! Today we talk about TV and cinema and watch the episode from a famous British TV-series "Sherlock".

At first you must know the difference between words serial and series. 

A TV series is a program that runs for a number of weeks and each week is a new episode eg: Sex in the Sity, House MD etc.

A TV serial is usually a fictional story that is ‘broken up’ into a number of episodes eg: Santa Barbara, The Thornbirds etc.

A TV serials are not so common now as they were about 20 years ago, the actual meaning has probably become blurred and the two are interchangeable.

"Sherlock" is a British television series that presents a contemporary update of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories. It was created be Stephen Moffat and Mark Gattiss and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor John Watson. Critical reception was overwhelmingly positive and the first series won the 2011 BAFTA Television Award for Best Drama Series.

Moffat and Gattiss say they decided that everything that had previously been done about Sherlock Holmes was canonical. Benedict Cumberbatch's Shelock uses modern technology, such as texting, the internet, and GPS, to solve crimes. Paul McGigan, who directed two episodes of "Sherlock", says that this is in keeping with Conan Doyle's character, pointing out that "In the books he would use any device possible and he was always in the lab doing experiments. It's just a modern-day version of it. He will use the tools that are available to him today in order to find things out."

The assignment:

Watch a little episode from the TV-series "Sherlock" as many times as you need to understand and reproduce the cues of the actors (please, try not to read text until you haven't understood the episode. Subtitles are like crutches. How can you learn to walk free, if you always use crutches?;)).

Then fill in the gaps in the script below. In the right column write down the words you inserted, with the translation.

I see you've written up the taxi driver case.
Er...yes.
"A [_____] In Pink". Nice.
Well, you know. Pink lady, pink case, pink phone. There was a lot of pink. Did you like it?
Um...no.
Why not? I thought you'd be [_____].
[______]?! "Sherlock sees through everything and everyone in seconds. What's incredible, though, is how [_______] ignorant he is about some things".
[_____] a minute, I didn't mean that...
Oh, you meant "[_______] ignorant" in a nice way(!) Look, it doesn't matter to me who's Prime Minister or...
Yeah, I know.
...who's sleeping with who...
Whether the earth goes round the sun...
Not that again! It's not important!
Not impor...?! It's primary school [____]. How can you not know that?
Well, if I ever did, I've deleted it.
Deleted it?
Listen. This is my [_____], and it only makes sense to put things in there that are useful. Really useful. Ordinary people fill their heads with all kinds of rubbish. That makes it hard to get at the stuff that matters. Do you see?
But it's the solar system!
Oh, hell! What does that matter?! So we go round the sun. If we went round the moon, or round and round the garden like a teddy bear, it wouldn't make any difference! All that matters to me is the work! Without that, my brain rots! Put that in your [_____]! Or, better still, stop [_____] your opinions on the world!

Interesting facts:

A pilot was filmed ahead of the first series of Sherlock, rumoured to have cost £800,000 – but it vanished after bosses decided it wasn’t quite right – a bit of sleuthing and it appeared on the DVD release of Season One.

221b Baker Street in the series is not all that it seems – it is in fact 185 North Gower street where they film Sherlock’s residence.

Sherlock writer and co-producer has compared his fictional Sherlock to real-life TV illusionist Derren Brown in that they both say something outrageous then they show you how they did it.

Actor Matt Smith auditionned for the role of John Watson before he was cast as the time-travelling lead in Doctor Who – Sherlock’s producers thought Matt was too barmy for the Watson role.

Sherlock’s “three-patch problem” quote in “Study in Pink” is a modern version of the Conan Doyle original “three-pipe problem” from the story “The Red Headed League”.

Interesting links:

BBC One site about "Sherlock" the series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t4pgh

"Sherlock" on Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1475582/

The blog of Dr. Watson: http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/

The blog of Sherlock Holmes: http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/

Home assignment:

In comments express your opinion of the following topic.

Sherlock says that ordinary people fill their heads with all kinds of rubbish. What do you think about his words that mind should be 'filled' only with things that are useful?

Good luck!