Oh dear – Mumbai/Khopoli as Peshawar/Abbottabad? What have you done NG?

Few hours ago National Geographic (NG) broadcasted a drama-documentary titled ‘Seal Team Six – The raid on Osama Bin Laden’. Before its broadcast the documentary attracted controversy as it was perceived that the timing of the broadcast (which the Republicans thought would be pro Obama) may influence the outcomes of the US presidential polls (which happens in less than 48 hours). Many news sources wrongly put that the NG documentary is the first on Osama’s death, the first would probably be 'Bin Laden: Shoot to kill' broadcasted on 7 Sep 2011 by Channel 4.

However this spiel is about something different - NG is known for its rigorous authenticity and is the watchword for trustworthiness and accuracy (I have been a long fan and subscriber of MGM and utterly in love with the map supplements). And that’s why I was a bit let down by some sloppy mistakes in filming on location. The documentary opens with covert HUMINT surveillance on Al-Kuwaiti (courier of Osama) in 2010 Peshawar. But lo and behold the shop signboards are in Hindi, the roads are full of Bajaj autos and cars with Maharashtra number plates (everyone drives with them from Al-Kuwaiti to the policemen, I suppose if Bin-Laden had driven a car then the documentary would have shown him driving a MH number-plated car), skyscraper in Peshawar and people too speak in Hindi (not Urdu or Pashto).

I can go on with the inaccuracies - women mostly wearing sarees, proliferation of ‘Indian make’ cars like sumo, omini, wagonr etc. (which are not available in Pakistan), Mumbai Police vans, people using Indian currency notes. It started reminding me of the infamous photoshoping of the pyramids (Re: NGM cover of Feb 1982).

The dashboard camera on the vehicle following Al-Kuwaiti shows coordinates: 17°23'36.68''N 78°29'20.95''E, one would guess that it would be near Peshawar/Abbottabad somewhere on the Karakoram Highway where the chase is purportedly being on, however surprise surprise the coordinates are of a petrol pump in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India wrong road, wrong state and wrong country.

According to the newspaper reports the Pakistan portion have been shot in Khopoli, Maharashtra (but some of the scenes especially that with the omini cabs, police van and the skyscraper is of Mumbai). To see what Peshawar look like have a look at the clip ‘Bin Laden’s cash flow’ which shows the background and extra feature to the main documentary or some YouTube video.

Well, one hopes that Kathryn Bigelow’s (of the Hurt Locker fame) Zero Dark Thirty a feature length movie due to be released in a month and a half time would be more authentic. The Pakistani portion was recreated in Chandigarh and Patiala, news report suggested that there were some overzealous idiots who protested that Pakistan locations being portrayed on Indian land with change in shop board language, flags and attire of extras and actors.     

In spite of such mistakes Seal Team Six is a commendable documentary which tries to look into the nitty gritty of the operation - actual and intelligence. It is one of the few documentaries which shows the help provided by the Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi in genetically tagging Bin Laden’s presence and the intelligence gathering teams on ground. A Raymond Allen Davis moment for one of the local agents (I guess its fictional like perhaps the infights between seal team members, but notches up the drama quotient). I must still say that there are scenes which show that the directors may not have altogether forgotten the small things – when one of the agents drink from a coal can it is in inscribed in Urdu, the policemen are wearing Pakistani uniforms (or at least they don’t look Indian).

Overall the drama-documentary is quite good and one of the best ones in the market, but perhaps the drama part could have been suppressed a bit and paid a lot more attention to details (little things that matter much).

Elementary?

Yesterday a new Sherlock emerged (albeit in pilot) under the title 'Elementary' at the US TV station of CBS. It puts Sherlock Holmes, the master detective, in a modern day setting. And of course comparison with BBCs acclaimed Sherlock is obvious.

The new Sherlock (let us henceforth call him CBS Sherlock) is a recovering addict and has Dr. Watson as a rehab companion at one of the brownstones in New York. CBS Sherlock is as gritty and moody as all the previous incarnation of the master sleuth, however he seems a bit unsure of himself at certain times (which is completely unHolmesworthy – legions of fans of Mr. Holmes have come to believe in the supreme self-confidence of the man, frustrated at times he might be but unsure naah!!). 

The case as shown in the CBS pilot is pretty straight forward a psychiatric wants to get rid of his wealthy wife (killing the wife part was there as a plot device in The Adventure of the Retired Colourman), what does he do? He uses one of his umm.. neurotic patients (who has a history of violence) to have a murderous go at his wife. To do this the doctor keeps no record of his meeting with the patient, allegedly changes drugs as well as changes his wife’s appearance (fat to thin, mote to no mole and blonde to red head) to allegedly make her fit the victim profile of the neurotic patient.

Well after some good Holmesian deduction CBS Holmes confronts the evil doctor with the theory only to be laughed off. Later from audio recordings in the cell phone of the killer it is proved that the doctor was in fact treating the killer. In between there were canonical moments like Holmes rearing honey bees (His Last Bow) etc.

So far so good, but still one question arose in my mind as a lawyer, how does the evidence tie up the doctor with the murders. The audio recording proves that the doctor has till now mislead the police by stating that he did not know the killer, yes he can be charged with obstruction of justice, but how to prove before the court that he’s the killer, still there are no smoking guns just surmises and theories. Of course people are bound to say that one should look for deductions in detective stories and law (as if there is any) in legal dramedies (Suits, Boston Legal etc.). But still it would have been better script if CBS Holmes could have found a more convincing smoking gun. Background score could also perhaps be a bit more menacing.

But having said that we must wait for the actual series, this is merely the pilot and they can be quite different from the actual product. One can dig up the pilot of BBC Sherlock (available at Youtube) which was never at par with the actual episodes (in the pilot BBC Sherlock actually is drugged by the cabby while in the first episode it is shown that Sherlock went with the cabby on his own volition).

Thus the verdict would be to [wait and watch] if CBS Sherlock can match or excel the BBC Sherlock (third season later this year?). All in all it is going to be a good few next months for Sherlock fans.

How did Sherlock survive?

Being a Sherlock Holmes fan, it was fantastic to discover ‘Sherlock’ series 1 on BBC. It is a re-adaptation of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes placing him in a modern day avatar in 2010 London. It was one of my favourite series while I was pursuing LLM in UK (when I also developed a liking for British classic sitcoms like Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Yes Minister and Vicar of Dibley). When I returned to India to take up a teaching position at one of the National Law Universities, I waited for series 2 of Sherlock and like many fans around the world, at the end of series 2, have been trying to guess how Sherlock might have survived the five storey fall off the Bartholomew Hospital.

Well here’s my solution (I am sure many have also chanced on similar or same solution):

1. Sherlock is given a chemical which can induce death like symptoms by Penny (to fool Dr. Watson).
2. Sherlock injects it while he’s talking with Moriarty (1:09:15).

This trick of hand was already done once in Series 2 when Sherlock took pulse of Irene as shown below:

3.      3. After that Sherlock jumps onto the garbage truck:

The aerial view is as below:

However there are certain points which go against the theory above, Sherlock just slipped off the building he does not have the required lateral momentum to propel him to the garbage truck which is at least 15-18 feet from the building. Also the sniper assassin must have seen Sherlock jumping onto garbage truck and thus would have logically shot Dr. Watson (unless he is also blindsided by the building like Dr. Watson). Further the shots of hands, which I interpret to be injections, can easily be interpreted to be prelude to the tapping off the dud codes.

Anyway I am eagerly waiting for Series 3 and check how far my theory succeeds. Just a side-note I would have been much happier if S2E3 didn’t show Sherlock alive at the end, there would have been more speculation and then BBC could have suddenly sprung Series 3 in 2012 autumn.