Adaptation télévisuelle et problématique de l’énonciation: le cas de la série « Sherlock Holmes » réalisée pour Granada Television (1984-1994)

• Main Author: Christophe Gelly
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2009-11-01
• Series: Études Britanniques Contemporaines
• Subjects: Doyle; Sherlock; adaptation; enunciation; heritage; narration
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/4137

The « Sherlock Holmes » Granada Television series evinces particular care as to the faithfulness with which Doyle’s text and the historical context are conveyed, within a « Heritage film » aesthetics peculiar to this type of fiction in Britain from the 1980s. Yet, this series also turned out to raise other questions about the way the enunciative system is modified through cinematographic adaptation, more specifically television adaptation, in the sense that the traditional role attributed to Watson in the short stories, that of anarrator actually hindering the reader’s access to knowledge, cannot be directly adapted through cinema. Thus, the peculiarity and limitations of the adaptation technique in the Granada series enhance the enunciative qualities of this series, in a self-conscious movement that ultimately raises questions as to the very nature of the narrative itself.