The Power of Public Copyright

Was anyone else really, really frightened when they heard that the BBC was making a 21st century version of Sherlock Holmes?

Was anyone else really, really relieved to discover that actually, it was good?  Oodles of fun, and strangely both respectful and innovative.  Full marks!

Authors, you see, are starting to be dead long enough.  When a writer dies, a clock starts ticking, and 70 years after their death, an alarm bell sounds that proclaims ‘here is their work!  Have it for free and go crazy…’  Thus in the last 12 months the world has gone a bit Sherlock Holmes-tastic as across the globe people wake up to the realisation that not only can they now go treading all over these characters, but they can make them do kung fu too and get away with.  Thankfully, in the case of Holmes it’s currently been a mixture of huge fun and surprisingly reverent… in a strange sticking-to-the-spirit-if-n0t-the-plot kinda way… although needless to say no movie will ever exceed Basil the Great Mouse Detective for sheer adventurous/detecting kaplunk.  (Not a real word.  But a good one.)  But hang on in there and soon other estates will start coming up too as authors start being dead long enough… D.H. Lawrence (be afraid), T.E. Lawrence (also be afraid, but in a better way) and George Orwell (respect) could wake up in the next few years to discover that their amorous characters are conducting epic love affairs against the background of world war one in the Arabian Peninsula while totalitarian powers chase them with rats through an underbelly of socialist dissent…

Let’s just hope that Steven Moffat is there to catch them when that moment comes…