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VIDEO: Norway fans in second Sherlock skit

The Norwegian duo behind last month's eerily accurate Sherlock spoof have done it again, but this time pushing their exaggerated take on the show's homoerotic themes even closer to the mark, and arguably well over it. Warning: it's quite risqué.

Published: 8 April 2014 11:17 CEST

VIDEO: Norway fans in second Sherlock skit

A scene from Mind Phallus, the new Norwegian Sherlock Holmes spoof. Photo: YouTube

Their new skit, titled 'Mind Phallus', perfects the duo's take-off of the quick-fire deduction and verbal brilliance of Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes, this time bringing in pretty good impression of Andrew Scott's Moriarty.

"In the BBC series, Sherlock Holmes retreats into his mind palace to solve mysteries. In this spoof on the show, he enters his mind phallus, with all the implications of that", the spoof's director Vidar Josdal told NRK.

The four minute spoof sees Sherlock played by Norwegian TV executive and comedian Vidar Magnussen and Watson played by Bjarte Tjøstheim, with whom he shares an office in the entertainment division of Norwegian TV channel NRK. The original skit came about after Magnussen joked that Tjøstheim looked exactly like Dr Watson in the series.

The first parody got hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube and was even subtitled in Korean and Spanish.

"After seeing the reception we knew we had to make another one as soon as possible", Josdal added. "There are other parodies on Youtube, but they look a bit amateurish compared to ours. We go all-in in the production, and I hope it shows."

Magnussen revealed after the first spoof that he had once been involved with the BBC's Dr Who series while it was being written by Mark Gatiss, Sherlock's creator.

"There I worked with a bunch of talented people, but everyone was absolutely gay," he said. "Then I thought that there is something about that in the series. We just took it a little further in our skit."

Gatiss, who made his name in The League of Gentlemen, is in a civil partnership with the actor Ian Hallard.

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Norway TV flooded with complaints after Eid broadcast

The Norwegian journalist Rima Iraki led the Celebration atfer the Fast programme. Photo: NRK

According to Erik Skarrud, the ombudsman's secretary, the organisation received 93 reports after the broadcast of “The Celebration after the Fast” on Sunday night, of which only a handful were positive.

“Someone called it 'propaganda for Islam' and a large number of them used the same sort of expression. There's probably a text somewhere that people are cutting and pasting from,” he told Kampanje magazine.

Others complained they “did not want to pay for something that could lead to terror”.

Over 300,000 people tuned in to watch the broadcast, which was helmed by the popular journalist Rima Iraki, the former presenter of NRK's Dagsrevyen news programme.

Eirik Sandberg Ingstad, who led the project, said he felt the experiment, the first such broadcast by a major Western TV channel, had been a huge success.

“We are pretty pleased with it. The response from the audience during and after the broadcast has been overwhelmingly positive, which indicates that we succeeded in creating a party where everyone felt welcome,” he told Kampanje.

The controversy prompted Norway's culture minister Abid Raja to write an opinion article, “When can I say 'my Norway'?, on NRK complaining of people's unwillingness to accept Muslim citizens as truly Norwegian.

He said that he himself had fasted on-and-off for Eid all his life, despite “not being the best Muslim in class”, and had found it emotional to see it celebrated by the nation.

“It was a historic event when our public broadcaster, as the first in a western country, dedicated an evening to the celebration of the end of the fast,” he said.

But that feeling had changed to “discomfort” as he learned of the complaints, he said, reminding him of the kind of abuse he received growing up in Norway, and still today as a minister: “You are not a Norwegian. This is not your Norway. Go back where you came from you Muslim bastard, you Paki.”

He said he had always tried not to provoke those who felt only ethnically Norwegian should use the term.

“For many years I lived with a kind of compromise. Instead of calling myself a 'Norwegian', I chose to use the terms 'new Norwegian' or 'brown Norwegian', in an attempt not to provoke people who are put out by me saying 'I am Norwegian',” he wrote.

But he said he wanted to change that.

“I was born in Norway, in Oslo, and with the exception of one academic year in Oxford and one working year at the Norwegian Embassy in India, I have lived all my life in Norway,” he said.

“My wife, Nadia, has too. My children are Norwegian. And I want to be buried in Norway when that day comes. From cradle to grave, I am Norwegian.”

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