Imaginary Worlds - Holmes and Watson: True Crime Podcasters

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

John Watson is a former army doctor who became a true crime podcaster when he met a consulting detective named Sherlock Holmes. You can hear about the cases they’ve solved in the podcast Sherlock & Co. Sound familiar? Holmes and Watson may have been enshrined in pop culture for over 130 years. But their adventures feel fresh and relevant in the audio drama Sherlock & Co – which masquerades as a true crime podcast. I talked with the creators of the show, Joel Emery and Adam Jarrell, who set out to adapt and modernize the entire Sherlock Holmes canon written by Arthur Conan Doyle, except not in its original chronological order. We discuss the challenge of reimagining these characters in the 21st century (and not being the first to do so), and why the bromance between Holmes and Watson plays into timeless questions around masculinity and how guys express their emotions. This episode is sponsored by IngramSpark. Get 15% off your first order of 15 more books at IngramSpark using the code IMAGINARY15. To support the show, you can donate on Patreon where you get access to the ad-free version and our companion show Between Imaginary Worlds. You can also buy Imaginary Worlds merchandise at our online store. My most recent Between imaginary Worlds episode, I interviewed the creator of the larp Acheron IV. You can sign up here to play the larp in Philadelphia over Memorial Day weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinski. In general, I am not a fan of true crime podcasts, but I found one that I love. It was created by a guy named John Watson. He's a doctor in London. He was injured while volunteering in the Ukraine war. After that, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He thought he'd try podcasting, so he was recording everything in his life. And he was looking for a roommate, a flatmate. And he meets a guy named Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock's name is the least unusual thing about him. He has this incredible ability for observation.

And he works as a freelance consulting detective. Evening. It's 11 a.m. Right. Yes, of course. Bedtime. Sorry, wait. Where have you been?

What happened? The dead body in Brixton. Oh, it was the taxi driver. The taxi driver. Sherlock, can you just elaborate for the podcast? They're renting an apartment from a real estate agent. called Hudson's. And the realtor, whose name is Mariana, takes an interest in their work. Sherlock actually keeps calling her Mrs. Hudson, even though that's not her name. And she ends up

becoming the administrator of their business, which is a detective agency and a podcast. Oh, yeah, who is that on the phone? It was the Brazilian embassy. Are you serious? What did they want? What do they want? They want our help. A Brazilian male murdered in London last night. What? Where? Barking is London. Gunshot wound to the head. I found it.

You've never struck me as a TikTok user? It's the quickest resource. Three videos here. One of the body. That's Thor Bridge, near Upton Station. Mrs. Hudson, head to the Brazilian Embassy. I'll message you our requirements. It's Mariana.

Hurry, Watson. The game is afoot. Yes, on my way. I'll grab my phone. Oh, God's sake, where is it? Right, right. Okay, as you've probably guessed, this is not a true crime podcast. Sherlock and Co.

is an audio drama about Sherlock Holmes in the modern world. Now, you may also be thinking, didn't the BBC already do that? Yes, there was a TV show with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman playing modern versions of Watson and Holmes. But that show was sometimes more of a reimagining of the original stories instead of a direct adaptation, and they're only 13 episodes.

There was also a CBS show where Johnny Lee Miller played Sherlock Holmes in modern-day New York, with Lucy Lou as Watson, and that show took even more liberties with the original source material. The creators of Sherlock and Co., Joel Emory and Adam Gerald, set out to adapt the entire canon

by Arthur Conan Doyle. That's 56 short stories and four stories, and four novels. And they're trying to stick closer to the original text. So when they adapted the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, it took them 10 episodes to cover the entire story. And the format of a fake documentary podcast creates a lot of breathing room to give you the sense that you're just following the lives of these real people. Sherlock and Co. has captured my imagination so thoroughly, I was inspired to start reading the original canon. and the points of comparison are fascinating.

For example, I got to a story from 1893 called the Musgrave ritual around the same time their audio drama version came out. In the original story, an old schoolmate of Sherlock Holmes named Reginal Mussgrave comes to him with a mystery around his household staff. Musgrave comes from very old money. In their audio drama version, Musgrave wasn't just a guy. that Sherlock knew from school. He was Sherlock's childhood bully. Sherlock sees him for the first time as an adult at the funeral of Musgrave's father, who had been a beloved teacher at their school.

Musgrave is walking in their direction when Sherlock says to Watson. Yes, there is no cruel a man. He is an incarnation of hatred, spite, and wickedness. Goodness, homes from the lower dorms. Delightfully good to see you, old boy. Hi, Reginald, good to see you too. So sorry about your father. Very, very decent of you, most thoughtful. Let me just have a quick matter with the family

and I'll circle back two ticks, lovely man. Thank you so much. Satan himself. Sorry, that guy. Guy, you say, inferring a cell or two at least of humanity. Far from it, John. Far from it. The guy that held your shoulder and called you a lovely man. The serpent sheathes its fangs, Watson. So in the audio drama, when Reginald hires Sherlock, along with John and Mariana, to solve a mystery, Sherlock has very conflicted feelings about it.

Joel Emery writes the scripts, and Adam Jarrell does the sound design and editing. I asked Joel, when he looks at the original stories, does he ask himself, how can I add a layer of emotional meaning to every plot point? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's partly because of the nature of what the audience is these days compared to in Arthur Conan Doyle's days. We do expect a bit more. Characters can't really come out of nowhere. And you can't just sort of not comment on a sort of broader relationship between the characters.

We just don't accept anymore. Oh, I used to know this guy. We expect there to be, whether it be baggage or whatever else might be there. So generally, I will try and expand what just a modern audience would expect. But Musgrave Ritual and Gloria Scott. The Gloria Scott is the name of another short story they adapted. They both kind of their Sherlock, if I remember correctly, Sherlock telling Watson of something that happened quite a long time ago. And these are his notes on it.

We can't do that because we're bound by John actually releasing his podcast as, you know, the modern day. as things go along. So I'll sometimes use a number of devices that make the characters feel younger and more vulnerable. So in Gloria Scott, they're literally having a sleepover. And it feels, and John and Marianna are starting to get to know each other.

And there's something about it that makes them feel like children again because that story was Sherlock Holmes' first ever case that he figured out when he was a teenager. And again, we can't do that. But we can bring the kind of sense of that to them. And then Musgrave ritual,

bullies, sort of tricky academic subjects and stuff like that are things that make us, will remind us of being young. So again, it was about can we get the sense of the original story by just kind of making our characters kind of regress. And once again, they're in a kind of sleepover situation, big scary house, feeling vulnerable. So Adam, when do you come into the production process? Because, I mean, the audio, I'm very picky about audio dramas and I am stunned at how. real it sounds and how quickly I suspend my disbelief.

Like, how much location recording do you do? Whenever we can, I try to do. I try to do that. Speaking of Musgrave ritual, for any spoilers, there's a scene where they scrub the, what end up being the crown jewels, basically. I know. I'm like, do I say spoiler for a story that's 130 years old?

Exactly. You'd be amazed how many times we get told off for spoilers. and I'm like, come on, come on. And I actually did that. Things like that I like to do so I could get my hands dirty about it. It's one of the things I love most about my job on Sherlock and Co.

But yeah, there's four Silver Blaze and How to the Baskervilles. Joel and I went to Dartmoor and I was running around with my microphone, the same microphone that John uses in the story, so it sounds as authentic as possible. I'm a bit of an audiophile. Music is my first love,

so I also am picky with audio drama. like yourself, Eric. And it needs to sound like it's being captured on John's microphone. Now, of course, we take autistic license when it comes to underscoring, you know, to heighten drama or even if there's some things where you think, hang on, would they really be able to record this? But that's just suspending your disbelief. But yeah, whenever we can try and get location recording, yeah.

Well, tell me, the hound of the Baskervilles was, that was, I was so riveted by that. You have a motorcycle chase in that audio drama. Oh, yeah, they steal the McDonald's delivery driver's moped. That's what they do, yeah. You did what? I told you, it's the least we could do for stealing the bike. We're not stealing it, we're borrowing it. Because we are busy, busy with something much more important than a McChrispy chicken burger.

It's the McSpicy chicken burger, to be accurate. Oh, shut up. So what was that? How do you record something like that? We steal a moped and we drive it through London. No, no. We have access to a lot of sound libraries. And there are hundreds and hundreds of motorbike sounds. And it's just up to me or Joel and Joel edits as well. To just try and find the best sound we want to mix it in.

I think that scene in particular had something between 20 and 25 audio channels. Because he can't just have the sound of a city. It has to be the sound of a motorbike passing through various elements of a city. So you've got a part of one conversation goes from the, you know, the front of the right into the back and different vehicles going by. There's a lot of moving parts quite literally to a scene like that. That's probably the extreme, isn't it, Joel, with regards to chases, any kind of vehicle chases. There's a big one at the end of Shostomol place as well, which I remember took me a couple of days just for a scene. and it's one of those things where you sit back and go,

oh, definitely, I've definitely done well there. I wonder how long I've done, and then you zoom out, and it's three minutes. But, you know, these things last the test of time. If you're passionate about it, it's never going to be finished. So sometimes I'll list an episode and go, oh, I should have done that, I should have put an extra bit in here? But with regards to, yeah, vehicle chases, they're probably the extreme of what a lot of the show is.

Not a lot of the show, but the most common place is obviously the living room of 2-21 B Baker Street, which is nice and simple with regards to sound design. Well, when you do, you said, you know, for the Hounds of the Baskervilles, you go, you went out to the Moors, you know, to record, or, you know, I think I read that. You actually went to modern day Baker Street to see, well, what does it sound like out there?

Yeah, all the, all the scenes of Baker Street, when they're walking to and from the house, that is walking to and from 221B Baker Street. I did it about 15 times one day. I must have looked lost. I must have looked like such a lost tourist. But I just had to make sure I didn't get any, any shot of anyone mentioning Sherlock Holmes or mentioning the BBC or something like that.

So that is genuinely Baker Street, yeah. The original stories about Sherlock Holmes were supposedly written by John Watson and published in a contemporary magazine. A modern-day Watson who was committed to writing instead of podcasting might find it challenging to figure out where to publish his stories. And Sherlock would have no interest in helping him find the best online platforms. So the safest bet for Watson would be Ingram Spark. Ingram Spark is an award-winning publishing platform that provides everything you need to successfully self-publish.

They make it free to publish and edit your book as needed, and that means you can focus on what you do best, the craft of your writing. Well, they make it possible for you to share your work with millions of readers. And when you self-publish with Ingram Spark, you are plugged into one of the publishing industry's large. global book distribution networks. They give you access to over 45,000 retailers, including independent bookstores and libraries. They also have courses on their site that you can take on marketing, design, and much more. Plus, you can connect with fellow authors and publishers through the Ingram Spark community. Get 15% off your first order of 15 more books using the code Imaginary 15. This offer expires at the end of the

year, get started today. When I first started listening to Sherlock and Co., I kept thinking about the challenge of adapting classic literature to the modern world. And I asked Joel, when he goes through one of the original stories, are there ever moments where he's completely stumped as to how to modernize it? The biggest thing is this such, this is so strange, but in this country, like the sort of the right-wing nostalgic view is that people back in time were harder, sort of hard. hardy of folk, stiff up a lip type thing.

That is absolutely not true of Victorians at all. They will faint at the slightest embarrassment. They will die of fright, all these different things. And a lot of the time Conan Doyle has put those things in. I mean, Sir Charles Baskerville dies of fright. There's a few characters that die of things that are very, very Victorian. They're quite sort of, they're gentle in their disposition. And sometimes those things, I'm a bit like, what is fright?

What on earth is that? Has he had a heart attack? Because that doesn't make sense, because Conan Doyle has mentioned heart attacks before. So I find that area tricky. And I think it's probably basically a lack of expertise in the area of, you know, biology and stuff. I don't know what fright would translate as in the modern day. And also the deaths are key to any case. So I'm reluctant to kind of fiddle around with them too much. Those are the things that I get on my guard about because the other ones are obvious, which is basically social standards. And especially when it comes to things like race, to things like sex, but I can, as anyone, meaning Conan Doyle will know that he's a man of his time, you know, we're in our time and it's, you know, those things need

changing, adapting. If I don't think it's that important, I'll just flat out avoid it. Some of them are absolutely integral to the plots themselves. So as an example, the man with the twisted lip, that's clearly someone with what we would call a cleft palate and you would never suggest that someone has a twisted lip because it's quite a cruel thing to say. So we put that phrase, as it were, into a child's voice essentially. It's a much more naive thing to say. It's not a sort of pointing finger and saying, look, there's a man with a twisted lip. So we have sort of tricks like that. But otherwise, I'd say that's it. Security cameras are the biggest bummer, to be honest. Security cameras are a real true crime killer, to be honest, for one of a better word.

You do often think, how on earth would this person get away with doing the thing they've done in one of the most heavily monitored cities in the world? Yeah, that's the big one. So I want to dive into Sherlock himself because I think it's fascinating in terms of modernizing him. Because one of the things I love about your format is there's a lot of downtime. Like in one of the earliest episodes, he and Watson stumble into a pub trivia night. What is Wrigley Tin? The answer is corrugated iron. It's corrugated steel, you fool.

You are incorrect, sir. Someone complaining. Sherlock, sit down. It's corrugated steel. And the other thing is that one of the big differences now is the way men express themselves and their level of psychological self-awareness. The Benedict Cumberback batch version of Sherlock famously called himself a high-functioning sociopath, but your Sherlock refers to himself as neurodivergent.

So how do you adapt Sherlock Holmes for modern day? We've never really liked the cold calculated genius. We were always going to kind of bring him out of his shell fairly early on. Sherlock Holmes, another surprising thing when you read through the canon, he is quite silly. He does try, he tries things out of just curiosity. He will do unusual things. It's a very, very attractive side of the character. And to me, that's way more attractive than the sort of,

cold, hard thinker that's got no time for people's emotions and stuff like that. So, yeah, I look out for the sort of affectations as well as not just in terms of what happens in the case, but how he behaves in the case, because you are bound to find something where, you know, he's decided to dangle upside down because it's giving him a better sort of perspective on something, stuff like that. So we heighten those. And that's made much easier by the fact that we have a very young listenership who love those kinds of things and will always gravitate way more towards them than the sort of austere steely stuff so yeah we we definitely embrace the fun side first which isn't blasphemy to to conan doyle fans because that is already in the text it just

gets it just kind of got forgotten after 130 years which is fair yeah i i think there's always a danger to make him too condescending i think when they go for the high functioning sociopath vibe I feel like it's a little harder to kind of almost root for him. Not that there's a, not that there's a team John and team Sherlock, but I think with the amount of time that they spend together, he would kind of soften that sort of hardness, but he's obviously a genius. When Joel read the original works,

obviously this man is neurodiverse, and that comes back to early about the Victorian attitude towards certain, you know, diagnoses, etc. And that's kind of what you took from it, wasn't it, Joel? Yeah, it was, yeah. I mean, as I've said before, my daughter was two at the time. She was diagnosed when I got the job to do this. So I'm reading books about autism and then I'm reading Sherlock Holmes.

And I think, wow, these are, this is pretty close shot from Conan Doyle. There's a scene actually in one of the recent episodes where Watson discovers that Holmes has actually kept some letters from listeners to their podcast talking about him and being neurodivergent. Are those real? They are, yeah. Yeah, they're their emails that he's obviously, I've said that they're letters or he's printed them out. But yeah, they aren't genuine, yeah. I removed some details of one. But yeah, they're real, yeah.

Yeah, I had a feeling they were. Hello, if this gets read, I'd like to express just how much this podcast means to me. I'm 12 and autistic. And this by far has been one of the best things. Hi, I'm Kai Rose from Buffalo, NY. Sherlock has made me realize that I don't need to mask. Thank you so much for everything. I love everything about your team.

Dear Sherlock, Sherlock, you keep all this. I do. I keep things that matter to me. You know, what's interesting, too, is that Sherlock's social class has been hinted at in previous depictions. I mean, every version of Watson has noticed that Holmes doesn't really need a job, but your Watson is very aware of it. And it bothers him, not that he has an issue with that, it kind of bothers him that Sherlock doesn't want to acknowledge the class differences between them. And you can hear it in their accents, in their choice of words. And I just found that, I found that totally fascinating. When did you start to realize this is

something people in modern day would kind of talk about? I think it was one of the first things I said to you, Joel. I think it was a case of like, if it's two guys in their 30s living in Baker Street, they're going to need a lot of money to afford the rent. And I think when we made the illustrious client, what do they get for the illustrious client cases at quarter of a million, was it, in total or 125,000?

Yeah, I think so, yeah. Or 150 grand or something. Yeah, and I think my kind of working class envy, let's call it that, of these two guys who were able to live in central London. I was like, okay, well, that'll be them for a year. They're probably sorted for a year now. So as mundane as that sounds, I was always perplexed as to how they could afford to live there.

And we didn't want to hint too much at some sort of, Sherlock's from a, you know, rich family, he's got this money, he's got this tied up in this. I think the illustrious client was enough for John, Sherlock and Mariana to say, oh, we could potentially make a business out of this. If this is the first case and we've done this well, we might be able to set ourselves up and give this a good go,

which I thought was quite sweet, and I think you kind of root for them after that, because it's not like the show drops in and they're already solving crimes. We hear how they recruit Mariana. Do you do this sort of thing often? Not often enough, Miss Hudson. You should, I mean, you should set up a company for this, like as a business?

For the money and the future of revenue. God, you're right. I'd be happy to help you set everything up. You would? Absolutely. I could, I mean, I could run it. That, yes, this is brilliant. Let's, right, let's register it.

Let's do it. Okay, great. Actually, I want to ask you about Mariana. I love the way you've turned, and a lot of people comment on this, Mrs. Hudson was the house, she was the landlady, basically. Yeah, the house. housekeeper, landlady, always bringing them tea, occasionally helping them out. And you have this, a woman named Mariano works for a real estate agency called Hudson's. And then for a while, Sherlock

calls her Mrs. Hudson, which annoys her. It's very funny. And she becomes the administrator of their business. She's like a third detective. Yeah. And a friend. So what, you know, you're really sticking a lot to Watson and Holmes in the canon, but then you've invented basically this new character, the Spanish woman, who is there now a trio? How have you noticed as, as you write and as the actors perform organically, what are you noticing about how the dynamic changes with them as a trio instead of as a duo? There's some stories where I think

I can't fiddle with Holmes and Watson in this particular case. And Mariana might sort of be backup base in that sense. But a lot of the time, I'll generally think, how can I bring Mariana along? I always think of them. I don't know if you have this in American wiring systems, But in the UK, you have, in a plug, you have live, neutral and earth, which essentially live is the majority of the electrical current.

Neutral is the cable that loops it back into the whole circuit. And then Earth is the cable that makes sure that the house doesn't burn down. It's the thing that keeps you safe. And I think Marianne is the thing that keeps them safe. Sherlock's the live wire. And Watson is that sort of neutral wire that is there to present the show, as it were. So she's really handy in that sense. And for a long time, I kind of stayed away from that because it felt like a trope for the female character to sort of be like, hold on a second.

You two are thinking of doing what. But ultimately, by embracing a sort of side of Marta de Silva who voices Mariana, I sort of walked the character towards Marta's kind of nerdiness. She wouldn't mind me saying that. And I think that's opened her up to be way more interesting in that Mariana has a sense of keeping everybody sort of under control and not getting too carried away. But she does have sort of quirky character characterisations in herself rather than just being, you know, some sort of some sort of square or killjoy or whatever you want to call it. Yeah. That's a testament to Marta, isn't it? All our cast, everyone involved was so lucky to it was such a phenomenal cast.

but I think it's testament to Marta especially that she's the, you know, the most famous duo in history, basically, in fictional history, and now a trio in our one and no one has said a bad word about it. Not even the most traditional of Sherlock fans have had a bad word to say about Mariana. Yeah, that actually is quite remarkable because you can imagine people raging about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower.

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Be the bridges I burn. Night my way. Forever. I just love my job. Get tickets now. The Devil Wears Prada 2. In theaters May 1st, directed by David Frankel. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. flip or that and enjoy via rail love the way one of the surprises to me actually reading the original stories was your watson is actually more or i feel like you've changed watson in some ways more than homes because the victorian watson is very victorian he is a proud citizen of the british empire his attitudes towards women might seem kind of patronizing by today's standards yeah but very normal for the 1890s. And also, what surprised me is that Watson doesn't live with homes that long.

He actually gets married fairly quickly. Yeah, he does, yeah. He is primarily a doctor writing stories about Sherlock is a fun hobby. He will take any excuse to ditch his conventional life and have adventures with his best friend, who he admires unconditionally. And there are so many scenes in the original stories that crack me up where he'll say, well, I was having dinner with my wife. And she's saying, well, this weekend, we're going to do this, this. And I get a telegram from home saying, you're needed at once. Luckily, I keep a bag packed at all times. And I say, darling, can I ditch you for the next two days and hang out with my best friend?

And she says, of course, dear. That's not your Watson. Nope. How did you come about adapting your Watson? One of the things is that in the Victorian times, generally, if you wanted to move into the upper classes, the much beloved upper classes, which is not the case now, you would become a doctor or you'd become a soldier. Watson becomes both. So he clearly wants to be in the upper classes. Now, we've made him a bit more modern British, which is kind of that resentment of the upper classes and that kind of that sense that he's the real Brit. He's the proper Middle Englander. He's the one that works hard, etc. So he's got that kind of chip on his shoulder, I think would be fair to say, which we just found nice ways to manipulate that into funny moments. I have tried to make Watson. We have to be careful because, like I said, the listeners are young and they're global.

We have to be careful when we do make Watson as sort of patriotic and as much of a servant of the king as he sees himself as the original because not everyone agrees or enjoys those kinds of attitudes towards Britain. But ours is well grounded, I think. He's from a rural area of the UK. Sherlock Holmes is kind of beguiling to him, not just because of his skill, but because he's this aristocrat that's got no interest in being an aristocrat. And he's this guy with his money is no interest in exploiting his money.

And I think that's what makes Watson curious towards him. Yeah. I think there are also, too, I think a lot in listening to your Watson versus reading the stories is how what's changed so much is how men express themselves, their level of self-awareness, how they express themselves emotionally. And friendships, male friendships are very different now than they were. And in that sense, I feel like, Like both Watson's are ultimately very typical men of their times. He's quite affectionate in the book. There's quite a lot of Victorian literature.

They do kind of men kind of fawn over each other's character a bit, but they would never say it to each other. So Watson writes it, doesn't he? Obviously. Yes. And he'll talk about the kind of majesty of homes and this kind of thing. I mean, what I will say is we're talking about a particular echelon in Victorian, England. And I would say, you know, the working classes were probably as hard as nails and then some because they had to be just to survive.

But that kind of, as you sort of move upward classwise, as they would have seen it back then, there is this kind of softness, delicateness towards one another. It's really interesting. We have our own version, I think, in our adaptation where it's, John will often have silly, jokey nicknames for Sherlock, calls him Shells quite a bit, Shirley Whirley. matey mate. There are a lot of affectionate words that come out of John's, more so than Sherlock, definitely. Although, like you say, we do keep the tradition of my dear Watson, my dear companion, which is lovely.

I think it always makes, if people listening, they always get a nice little smile out of that, especially if they know the original text. Given how old the original stories are, I was surprised to learn that a lot of their listeners are under 25. I asked Adam and Joel, is that because Gen Z grew up watching Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Jr. or Sherlock Holmes

and they're hungry for more content? Or do they relate to this version of Watson because he is a content creator? I think it's a mixture of the two. I think you've hit the nail on the head there. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say equal parts, what you just said, Eric. I think the BBC series was quite something when it came out.

Remember it, for lack of a better term, really cool. And I think if you're a kid watching that, you'd think it was really cool. I think it's one of those things if you were, if you were good all week, you're probably allowed to stay up and watch it, you know? And it's probably one of those shows where, wow, what a treat. But also the content creator aspect and element of it, that's something that, you know, as myself and Joel in our late 30s, didn't grow up watching people who were content creators as such. So I think it probably strikes a chord with them. I'm not sure.

But I think the reason that we mention how young a large amount of our listenership is is because it was such a shock for those reasons as far as how all these stories are. But I think classics are a reason. And they resonate with people of all ages, really, no matter how you are introduced to the characters. Yeah, I think it's actually kind of an amazing one to one because in terms of Watson publishing the stories, the world of the world of the world of

of media that he would have been publishing the stories. The only equivalent to that would be now true crime podcasting in the 100-something years in between if he's writing stories in the 1940s, you know, it's, it doesn't, you know, I don't know, it doesn't have the same impact that it does. Oh, that's nice. How quaint. You know, or even in the Benedict Cumberbatch Martin Freeman version, he has a blog. And you're like, oh, okay, so he's a blogger.

But somehow being a content creator, it actually is such a perfect one-to-one. In terms of what the meta idea of what Watson was doing, that it's kind of amazing that it's taken this long for it to feel how exciting and vibrant that must have been for him to have been publishing these stories in the 1890s. Yeah, that's exactly how we feel. I think I can't name any other versions that are Watson's POV at all. I can name some brilliant versions of Sherlock and Holmes, obviously,

but generally it's about watching the two of them. It's got nothing to do with Watson's. point of view, whereas you are stuck with our Watson, whether you want to be or not, because it's his microphone and he cuts it all together. Well, I do love the way on social media you react or you interact with the fans as Watson. I mean, you continue the thing, like on Patreon, people, if they write to you, it's, you know, it's Watson. A Discord as well, I think.

I mean, how far do you take this? So he does the Discord. He does Discord chats. People call them John Lines. So there's a couple of them a month where he will sort of. of just say, you know, I'm preparing a carbonara in the kitchen and Sherlock is currently in the lounge trying to fix his violin. Mariana's on the phone to a client downstairs and then people will just kind of like talk about their day and Watson will make, you know, a few sort of jokes

and stuff. And then, yeah, it's kind of sort of 15 minutes of that. When we first started, Watson was replying to emails. Can't really do that anymore because there's just too many of them. listeners have obviously been shouted out to in the show. We'll do Twitter and Blue Sky. Instagram and TikTok we've had to do as a show as the show itself because we basically found it impossible to promote stuff without shattering the fourth wall entirely. So we essentially had to kind of pick which ones were going to be John Watson

and which ones were going to be Sherlock and Co. Podcast. So the show has grown a lot. you're talking about in terms of the fandom. And also, too, as Watson has become a better podcaster and better audio producer, the show has become more sophisticated in how it sounds. Are there things, as you've got now, probably a third of the canon left, are there things that you are looking forward to doing creatively that you maybe haven't done before? Oh, that's a good question. I think once Mycroft is introduced, there'll be a whole new dynamic. I'm really looking forward to Mycroft coming into the show.

Mycroft is Sherlock's brother, who is high up in the British government. That'll just be someone else for Sherlock to bounce off and for John to be confused by. I'm looking forward to that relationship. Any sort of underscoring that we do, coming back to what you mentioned about John becoming a better editor, you notice that there's a bit more underscoring in certain adventures. He would have never done that when he first started learning to edit. He does it in Gordon Pantsney, doesn't he? And then he actually says in the outro, how great was that editing?

Yeah, yeah, he's so chuffed with it. That's his first go with it. He's so chuffed. And in the red-headed league, he underscores a car chase. And then we hear the cut. And Sherlock going, you added music. And John's like, yeah. He's like, hmm, seems a little on the nose.

Well, it captures the drama. Hmm. What do you mean? Mm. Just an interesting creative choice. That's all. Right, go away. And then we come back into the scene.

One of the most impressive things to me about the show is that the actors don't record together. Paul Waggett, who plays Watson, is British, but he lives in New Zealand. So the time zones don't match up with Harry Atwell, who plays Holmes. What Paul Waggott's able to do is John Watson to not just hold people's attention and not just sort of pull them through the plot and keep them interested, but to be so likable, to be so like to have people really, kind of reach out, care for him, root for him and stuff like that,

is just so hard to do. I mean, any actor will tell you, I know Paul's, R. Watson, is comical in a sense, but sort of playing the straight man and playing the person that's trying to keep the plot on track is hard work. It's hard work.

Absolutely. You have to be so likable and you have to really found your voice by the time you go for that. And then Harry Atwell, who plays Sherlock, I sometimes feel guilty making Sherlock have jokes.

or Watson jump in with a joke because sometimes I just want to hear Harry go for it and go and go and go because I genuinely believe when he's absolutely Sherlocking doing sort of scans of a room of a person of a conclusion of the case I genuinely think he's the best Sherlock Holmes

there is. I don't think there's anyone better. Now that I'm reading the stories, I'm actually hearing Harry's voice in my head as Sherlock. That's good. Oh, great. That's good. And it's funny too is when I first heard him too.

I was like, oh, well, it must have been very influenced by the Benedict Cumberbatch version. but you've said he never watched the show. Never seen it. Yeah. Never seen it. What Harry has given us is they,

and I don't mean this in the bad way because it's a really good way, there's a kind of rigidity to him, his Sherlock. You can almost feel his posture. Yeah. When Harry's talking. And it has allowed for, you know, some verbatim lines to come out of Harry's mouth and sound absolutely what our

Sherlock Holmes would say and not something that a Sherlock Holmes would say, 18, 95 and we're trying to make it work. It sounds totally natural to him. I've put a lot of work into making that the norm for our character, but I don't think it would have been possible without the kind of voice that Harry gave us. Because he doesn't speak like that in real life. He has a very sort of bouncy, fun voice. But yeah, it's perfect, really. It's absolutely spot on. In some ways, I actually find Sherlock Holmes more interesting in the present day. On one hand, On the hand, a 21st century Sherlock finds himself in a crowded pop culture landscape that is full of quirky outsider detectives who are probably inspired by him. But Sherlock still stands apart because of the way his mind works.

He's like a living search engine or a human hard drive. And I know people who feel like their ability to recall anything is diminished because they rely so much on the internet or information they stored on the internet. their computers. And when we get absorbed in our phones, we don't see what's right in front of us. Sherlock Holmes does not have those problems. But when people try to act like Sherlock Holmes and obsess over every detail of a real mystery, they sometimes turn themselves into conspiracy theorists. They think if they look hard enough, they'll see the truth hiding in plain sight, but they end up constructing a fantasy. It's nice to believe. that somebody like Sherlock could unpack the most convoluted mysteries.

And when he gives his conclusions, everybody agrees he's right. I wish more things in the real world felt that elementary. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Joel Emery and Adam Jarrell. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If you like this episode, I did a whole episode just about John Watson. and our mini-series about sidekicks in 2019.

We have another show called Between Imaginary Worlds. It's a more casual chat show that's only available to listeners who pledge on Patreon. In the most recent episode, I talked with LARP designer Joseph Mastentwono about an incredible LARP that I played called Akron 4. The LARP is inspired by Soviet science fiction, and he's running it in Philadelphia on May 23rd and May 24th. I'll include a link in the show notes. Between Imaginary Worlds comes included with the ad-free version of the show that you can get on Patreon.

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