Sherlock: The Blind Banker

“I thought bankers were all supposed to be heartless bastards…”

Firstly, I should point you to this, which I discovered by means of this excellent blog, which I heartily recommend to you. These two links deal with this episode’s dodgy ethnic stereotyping far more eloquently than I could, so I’ll be adding little more than the odd comment on the topic. Interesting, though, that while there are some ethnic groups for whom this sort of blatant racial stereotyping would, quite rightly, never be allowed to reach the screen, there seems to be something of a blind spot concerning Chinese people. I certainly don't recall any media comment at the time.

Plus, this is, notoriously, the not-as-good-as-the-other-two episode of Sherlock, written by Steve Thompson. I’m aware of his stuff for the theatre, but I’ve only encountered him before via his Doctor Who script, which was a bit meh. Actually, though, there’s lots of good stuff in the script here; the plot is clever and well-structured, the dialogue and characterisation are generally good, and Thompson does one thing particularly well. I remember watching an episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe in which he interviewed several of his favourite television writers, and hearing Russell T. Davies explaining that scripts often fail to take into account that people never really listen to each other in real life, with a given dialogue actually being two monologues which only sometimes intersect- all very Pinteresque. Anyway, Thompson is rather good at this here, especially in scenes between Sherlock and John. It’s just a shame that these genuine good points are outweighed by the ridiculous and camp stereotypes, which pretty much spoil the episode.

Anyway…the early scenes with Sherlock (inexplicably fighting a bloke with a sword in Baker Street) and John (getting on with those self-service thingies about as well as most of us do) which nicely remind us of the character traits of these people who we have, after all, known for only an episode. We’re reminded that Sherlock is, well, Sherlock Holmes. But John, with his addiction to excitement, is a far more interesting and deep character than the Watson of screen tradition.

We’re soon involved in the mystery, interestingly via an old mate of Sherlock’s. We’re also introduced to Detective Inspector Not-Lestrade, played by the bloke who played Eugene in Torchwood: Random Shoes. Not-Lestrade is young, recently promoted, and rather amusingly made to follow a character arc from scepticism to finally becoming Sherlock’s bitch. Sherlock gets some wonderfully arrogant lines to aim at him: “This investigation might move a bit quicker if you were to take my word as gospel.”

The whole investigation, and the pace of revelations, is rather clever, and nicely interspersed with character moments. John gets a job and an asbo. Unfortunately, though, we soon find ourselves at a rather clichéd shop full of Chinese ethnic stuff, and we eventually get to meet Soo Lin (wasn’t she in Blake’s 7?) at the museum. Her exposition is basically a load of Fu Manchu silliness, including old-fashioned references to “tongs”. Still, her fate is awfully tragic. She’s worked hard to escape from her awful past yet here it is, catching up with her, in the form of her own brother.

We get a brief glimpse of the girl who fancies Sherlock from last episode, and this time Sherlock quite deliberately flirts with her just so he can get into the morgue with Inspector Not-Lestrade. Interesting.

Oh, and what’s Sherlock up to with this searching for the book upon which the code is based? Surely he ought to have made a list of each victim’s books first, found which ones they both owned, and narrowed things down considerably? He may be a genius but you wouldn’t want him doing the filing.

There’s some nice comedy arising from Sherlock inserting himself as the gooseberry between John and Sarah (will we ever see her again, or has nearly getting killed led her to dump John?), but essentially the last third of the episode is largely taken up with awkward ethnic stereotyping.

There’s no getting away from that, really. And it’s a shame, because otherwise this episode is much better than I remembered, with lots of clever touches.