besleybean wrote:

Well we all have our crosses to bear... if we don't believe in Johnlock, it's insinuated we are homophobes.

Not all of you, but they are certainly out there.
 

Another con:

It is unfair to the actors who got into the show by the proper casting that they suddenly have to act with people who never got to be tested in this way and had their doors to the role open because they are friends/family....

Vhanja wrote:

I actually think it was clever to cast for instance BC's parents as Sherlock's parents and AA as John's wife All of them already have that relationship with their son/partner, they don't have to fake it or pretend (except for whatever goes on in the scenes, of course). But the relationship is already there, and you get a lot for free by doing that.

Sorry, but that probably is the worst reason I can think of for giving a role to someone. We are talking about actors here. Castings are done so you can test chemistry, among lots of other things. Actors play scenes like the bathroom/bedroom scene you've mentioned all the time, and such scenes usually work because the casting people have cast the right actor/actress for the job. I'm sure there are lots of actors and actresses in the UK who would have been able to deliver a brilliant performance playing John's wife (or Sherlock's parents). Because it's their job, because it's what they've learned at drama school, because it's their talent, you name it.
To 'fake' and 'pretend' is basically the job description of an actor.
 

Last edited by SolarSystem (February 22, 2016 10:54 am)

It might be a hindrance as well as a bonus.

Ok well none of us(as far as I am aware) are casting directors, certainly not for BBC Sherlock.
They have had their main cast in place for some years now. We either accept it or we don't, but it's not going to change.
I will repeat that I am happy with the entire cast, but even if it wasn't, I wouldn't actually see it as any of my business.
However, if anybody has any ideas for future stories/story lines and suggestions of castings for those characters...I would be delighted to hear them.
Further, if anybody wants to see the exit of any particular character and has an idea how might that happen...this too, I would be interested to hear about.

nakahara wrote:

Some cons of nepotism:
- three authors, not two, worked at Sherlock at the beginning. But poor Thompson, although he wrote one of the most successful episode (TRF), was almost never featured in any promotional work nor interview and at the end he was discreetly sent away or left without even being mentioned. Because he is not "part of the family". It´s a pity and a bit ungrateful that TPTB mutely omitted him and took all the accolades themselves.

Yes, probably not the best thing for the show. Whatever reason(s) Thompson is no longer around, it would  have been a healthier, more vital, better series, with him included in the creative process.

- it´s all right when you promise your friends that you will feature them for a few minutes in your work. It becomes the problem when you do that in the series which has only three episodes every three years. Instead of plotting the brilliant action in an episode, you are suddenly forced to write lengthy scenes for the parents of one actor, the partner of the second actor, some unknown person who asked you to be cast as a villain of the piece, you also write long smug scene for yourself... and suddenly you are at the end of an episode and must help yourself with a bomb off-switch to give the episode some ending....

New material released only every 3 years, only 4.5 hours of running time in those years, and as you say, they've had to make room in that scant amount of time for the people they wanted to include. But they made that choice freely, and while in their right minds, lol. No one actually forced the alleged nepotism casting, but once they made that casting bed, then they had to lie in the mess they'd made, write the story around all of it.

- casting of a real life couple as a fictional couple in your series makes any discussion of the said fictional couple problematic. If one of the fictional spouses does the nasty thing (like shooting the main character dead), you can´t even point this out - because for some, suddenly it´s the real couple you are criticising...

And hence the box we've found ourselves currently living in . I wish I could open up a little trap door in their minds and step in and ask them, "What could you have been thinking?"

It's done now, no sense criticizing any of it. But I do have to wonder where in heck they'll be going now.


 

Well said, dear.