The War of the Worlds: Part 2

"This isn't our planet any more."

Oh dear. The first episode was flawed but had promise, and Peter Harness is a writer with a good track record. Yet this second episode is a load of turgid dross that bodes I’ll for a final episode which I will only be watching because of this blog. What went wrong?

There were issues with the first episode, certainly. Rafe Spall has no charisma. And the original novel is perhaps more justly famous for the barriers it become than for its quality. But there’s nothing in this first episode to suppose a mess like this may follow. Essentially we have two narratives- a main one in 1905 after the initial invasion as chaos ensues but, eventually, the Martians die for reasons which aren’t entirely clear unless you happen to have read the novel or, indeed, seen any of the numerous screen versions. The framing narrative is set a few years later, on a much redder Earth, with the Martians long gone but their terraforming has seeming to have turned Earth into a red planet which is slowly becoming less capable of supporting humans- and, one assumes, more hospitable for those of Martian extraction.

This is an attempt to insert the current climate crisis into the story, essentially wrapping up the invasion early on after a number of set pieces so that we can focus on a theme which obviously resonates for our age. But this is ill-conceived; we still don’t care about the characters, particularly not George, and the constant striving in both narratives for the couple to reunite just simply fails to be interesting. Instead we are left with the ideals and while, yes, the obvious subtext is laudable, it feels very much crowbarred in. And what exactly is this saying? The climate crisis here isn’t man made, as ours is. The parallel is crude.

So yes- the tripods look good. So does the reddened world a few years on. Eleanor Tomlinson and Robert Carlyle are good. But the whole thing just fails as a drama and that is down, I’m afraid, to the script.

The War of the Worlds: Part 1

“I mean, something can’t erupt from Mars and end up in Surrey.”

I know, I’m a week behind, but here I am blogging this. After all, following Jonathan Strange I could hardly miss another adaptation of a classic geek novel by Peter Harness and while, I think, this isn’t quite as good- much like the source material, to be honest- it’s a solid and welcome return of War of the Worlds to its period roots- although why they set it a few years after the novel’s publication dare of 1898 I have no idea. Edward VII is king but the Tories are clearly in power, going by the prominent role of a monocle-free Uncle Joe Chamberlain, so it’s only a few years later- presumably 1902 as Ogilvy mentions Mars has been equally close in ‘94 and ‘98.. Why change the period so very slightly?

Nevertheless, the whole thing looks superb. That goes for both the period setting and the visual effects, which either goes light on the CGI or wears it lightly. The direction cannot be faulted. And the script takes an intelligent approach of taking Wells’ plot and approach and adding drama- so Wells’ unnamed narrator is now George, and he is scandalously living in sin with Amy while technically still incestuously married- and because his ex won’t sign the papers he won’t get a divorce until she dies. Ouch. All this, and the ensuing friction with George’s brother Frederick, adds depth. So does the use of the imperialistic Chamberlain as politician of choice- after all, the subtext of the novel is to turn the behaviour of the imperialistic British against us.

Eleanor Tomlinson is splendidly charismatic, and Robert Carlyle excels against type as the scholarly Ogilvy. But there’s a charisma vacuum in the person of Rafe Spall, who doesn’t make us like or care about George. So, in spite of the top notch production and Peter Harness’s script, I’m a little ambivalent, not only about Spall but whether Wells’ novel as source material can lead to good drama; there are reasons why it’s often been departed from.

Let’s hope the remaining two episodes don’t rely much on Spall.

Sherlock: The Final Problem

"I wrote my own version of the nativity when I was a child. "The Hungry Donkey". It was a bit gory. But if you're gonna put a baby in a manger, you're asking for trouble."

I've not been quick in blogging this episode so I've not failed to notice the divided reaction which seems, anecdotally, to be more negative than not. And one of the main criticisms I hear- that this is yet another non-whodunit- is a valid one in that Moffat and Gatiss are certainly not writing what their audience wants and expects from Sherlock. But here lies, I suppose, the question: are writers mere hacks hired to give an audience what they want, or are they artists who may transcend such considerations? There is, of course, no easy answer, and I do not claim to be firmly on either side. But I will make the obvious point that giving the audience what that want connects very awkwardly with giving them surprise and unexpected events. I will also note that I enjoyed this episode very much. And that Mrs Llamastrangler was deeply affected, to the point of tears at the end.

This episode is a series of interlocking puzzles and fun little intellectual games, all with a touch of the macabre, but it is of course really about the character stuff, an excuse to explore the psyches of not only the fascinating Eurus but also Sherlock, John and the pleasingly foregrounded Mycroft.

If there's a disappointment it's the relative lack of Moriarty, whose games from beyond the grave do not come close to living up to expectations and whose screen time is painfully limited. But Eurus is a superb creation and Sian Brooke gives an incredible performance. It's so very clever that, after all the misdirection hinting at a third Holmes brother called "Sherrinford", this is simply the name of the prison where Eurus does her Silence of the Lambs stuff.

There are clever nods to The Musgrave Ritual and The Three Garridebs, but here we are quite moving away from a Holmes canon that the series may have outgrown. Certainly, each character- including Mrs Hudson, Molly and Lestrade, gets what would work as a final scene, suggesting that this may have been intended as a possible finale. I suspect no one connected with the show really knows whether or not Sherlock will ever be back, what with everyone being so very busy, but that this was designed as a fitting finale if need be. I hope it isn't, and I'm sure the creators do too. After all, we end with Sherlock and John both back in 221B Baker Street, and The Dancing Men...

And yeah. Mrs Hudson vacuuming to "The Number of the Beast". Awesome.

Sherlock: The Lying Detective

"I'm the widow of a drug dealer, I own property in central London, and for the last bloody time, John, I'm not your housekeeper!"

The character of Culverton Smith is, at one level, the embodiment of an idea explicitly referred to in the script: what if all the serial killers we know about- mentally subnormal, odd and marginalised- are just those who get caught? What if, every so often, there is a rich and powerful serial killer who simply kills with impunity? There's a blatant subtext here: Smith stands for Jimmy Savile, and that obviously informs Toby Jones' (excellent) performance; he even has his "own" hospital. There's a reason why Sherlock Holmes declares Culverton Smith to be the very worst and most despicable adversary he's ever met.

This is a plot by Steven Moffat which is surprisingly straightforward and relatively free of his usual narrative tricks, although the camerawork remains as clever as is usual for Sherlock. It isn't really a whodunit, either; like Columbo, the tension lies in whether or not Sherlock can prove the guilt of the obvious killer.

No; the narrative tricks lie elsewhere, in the interplay between Sherlock and John, and in their interactions and slow reconciliation. And yes, Sherlock is almost... nice, at times here. He certainly reacts sensitively, for him, when John confesses that he is not the man Mary thought he was, and had been flirting by text with another woman. It is here, with the character stuff, where we see the more traditional Sherlock narrative cleverness. And it's good telly. And yet- it's about time we had a proper, clever whodunit, don't you think?

Nice cliffhanger, though,,with Sherlock's sister, whom I assume to be a baddie...

Sherlock: The Six Thatchers

"Don't you dare! You made a vow!"

Oh my. Well, spoilers abound, obviously. You have been warned.

The episode starts out so light-heartedly. There's a nifty cover-up for Sherlock so he can not go to prison, and he's all happy and stimulated in the knowledge that Moriarty is back. Sherlock even seems to be channelling Matt Smith's Doctor for much of the first part of the episode ("Are those ginger nuts?"), and there's much fun to be had throughout. Hence the shock at the end. But let's look st the whole episode as Mark Gatiss has utterly outdone himself with a superb bit of telly.

It's fun seeing Holmes rush through a fun series of cases in what has become typical Sherlock style, with John's blog superimposed on screen, all the wit and fun of the birth of little Rosalind and the addition of a baby to the dynamic, and especially the way that John and Lestrade manage to bond by taking the piss out of Sherlock. And then, almost in the background, we're introduced to the busts of the Evil One that give us our modern version of The Six Napoleons. At first this isn't foregrounded but, after a bit of fun with Toby the uncooperative bloodhound (never work with children or animals) we discover that there are six of them, made in Tblisi. And I for one knew, having read the short story, that the significance was likely to be the contents of one of the statues. But that isn't the twist; the twist is that this isn't to do with Moriarty at all, or the magnificent red herring that is the Black Pearl of the Borgias. It's about Mary's past.

We get a flashback to an embassy hostage rescue gone wrong, with one of the four agents being Mary and another being our antagonist whose name, we learn, is Ajay. And Ajay seems to think that Mary is a traitor and wants her dead. That's awkward. Yet Mary denies this to Sherlock and, after a fun few scenes in which she tries to leave for exotic shores to sort it out herself, she ends up explaining herself both to Sherlock and an understandably peeved John. Poor Ajay ends up dead but it seems that Mary is not the "Englishwoman" who betrayed them all. So who was it?

What is awful, and will of course become even more awful, is that John has been exchanging sexy texts with another woman, and it's even left ambiguous whether he's had an affair. All this while Mary thinks he's perfect. So the final scene arrives and the baddie turns out to be Vivian Norbert, the secretary- and we have, obligingly, been provided with a few clues to that effect. The crime is solved, the case is over- but Sherlock can't resist gloating over his adversary and, horribly, Mary ends up taking a bullet for him, and John's whole world with it. And the guilt must make it even worse.

So we end up with John cutting Sherlock out of his life utterly even as Mary implores Sherlock from beyond the grave to "save John Watson". The gloom is leavened only by a neat little reference to The Yellow Face and Mycroft making a call to "Sherrinford"....

That was good. Sherlock is back.

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

"I fear she has branched into literary criticism by means of satire. It is a distressing trend in the modern landlady."

Well, wasn't that superlatively brilliant? Oh, the present day scenes were a little pointless in terms of content (I hate Sherlock's "mind palace", too) but I suppose they had to be there to justify this episode happening. Everything else was awesome.

There's a lot here for fans of Conan Doyle's original stories by delightfully mashing A Study in Scarlet with A Study in Pink, introducing us to Sherlock with Victorian trappings. It's a real treat; all of the characters as portrayed by the actors we know work just as well in a Victorian setting, as well they should, and we have lots of fun with all of them, including Mrs Hudson. Even Mycroft (Mark Gatiss in a fat suit) and Molly Hooper (er, in a moustache, but nicely illustrating the episode's themes) make appearances.

The central image is delightfully grotesque, too- a gun totin' and bloodied bride, reminding me of the character from Kill Bill. So too is the use of Watson's stories for the Strand magazine, and the suggestion that there's a distinction between the "real" Holmes and the one who appears in the stories.

It's well directed, as everything by Douglas Mackinnon invariably is, with plenty of Sherlock's trademark visual storytelling tricks, a magnificent escape from dull realism as well as being extraordinarily clever.

There are plenty of nods to the canon, from the acknowledgement that The Blue Carbuncle is a bit pants to the five orange pips (and the use of Klan like hoods at the end ties into this, if I may spoil a century old short story). The ghostly figure haunting Sir Eustace through the mist even calls to mind The Hound of the Baskervilles. Most intriguing is the mention of Itene Adler, and the hint that the "real" Holmes has a more complicated reason for lack of interest in women than the canon version. And then there's the cocaine. And Reichenbach. Yes, even Moriarty works in this context.

The big reveal- that behind all this are a protocol-female just secret society out to get votes for women and punish abusive men- is both wonderful and a satisfying payoff to the wry commentary on gender politics as seen throughout the episode.

And then it's the present day. And Moriarty's back. Not that he isn't dead or anything, but he's back anyway. And we probably have years until the next episode...

The Madness of King George (1994)

"We consider ourselves blessed in our constitution. We tell ourselves our Parliament is the envy of the world. But we live in the health and well-being of the sovereign as much as any vizier does the Sultan."

This is scripted by the great Alan Bennett and stars the great Nigel Hawthorne (who, sadly, only graduated from the excellent Yes, Minister to a glorious film career at the end of his life), so obviously it's superb. It's as historically accurate as it's sensible for a play-cum-film to be (Alan Bennett did this period when he read History at Oxford, you know), full of heart, and funny. Cyril Shaps' poo-obsessed doctor is a particular delight.

We begin with a few scenes establishing where we are. Greville, the King's new equerry, is our POV as an audience, and we establish what the King is like as a person- pretty damn eccentric, what what? This is essential: before he goes mad, we need to see what he's like when he's sane. We also see his loving (but probably sexless) relationship with the Queen, his traditional Hanoverian hostility to the profligate and indolent Prince of Wales, and the political context of all this. Cold fish and budding alcoholic Pitt the Younger relies on the King's survival and sanity for his career and that of his faction of Whigs. If the King is replaced by Prince George as Prince Regent, then Charles James Fox is waiting in the wings with a somewhat more radical bunch of Whigs, which could mean a load of extremist nonsense like the abolition of slavery. Heavens above.

(The Tories are, incidentally, in no position to form a government: it was they who lost America and they will be out of contention for a generation.)

It is, of course, as popular culture always shows us, extremely dull at the court of George III. Versailles this is not. Nor, thank heavens, is it the awful Brighton Pavilion. But things soon become interesting as the King's behaviour takes a turn for the bizarre.

The film concerns the progress of his madness- mercifully brief, this being his first lapse in 1788: he would not recover, alas, from another attack in 1810, long after the film ends. The film seems to adopt the prevailing theory that the King's malady was, in fact, porphyria. A caption at the end reminds us that this is hereditary. Ha!

The meat of the film consists of the battle of wills between the King and Dr Willis, a man who is now able to exercise his authority over no less than a King ("No, Sir! You are the patient!"), if only for a little while. The Prince Regent will not have his way. Yet.

These scenes are fantastic, but the whole film is so damn watchable. It's brilliant. I mean, it's Alan Bennett. Just go and watch it now.

Sherlock: The Sign of Three

"Who leaves a wedding early? So sad."

Series Three continues to play with the format by not only giving us a wedding comedy episode but playing gloriously Moffaty games with structure, basing the bulk of the episode around Sherlock's alternately hilarious and deeply moving best man's speech and it's associated flashbacks, doing brilliant things with the characters, and giving us a splendidly watertight whodunit element to boot, albeit one that I, for once, substantially guessed in advance. I hope my own forthcoming wedding is as exciting as this, although I assure you that our reception will have much better music.

Interestingly, this is credited to Moffat, Gatiss and Thompson, meaning that Stephen Thompson is the only one of the troika not to get an episode of his own this series, and the episode feels very much in the style of Steven Moffat.

There are far too many brilliant things to mention, from the opening with Lestrade (bank robbers in scary clown masks- my coulrophobic fiancée had to look away!) to the nod to The Sign of Four with the character of Sholto (perhaps too obviously hinted at early on as a potential victim), with an apparently incidental and involved "locked room mystery" proving key to the whole thing. This episode is as elegant as it is fun.

I particularly enjoyed the wedding planning scenes, again showing us the great dynamic between Mary, John and Sherlock. The stag night scenes, while splendidly performed, do not quite work, but the centrepiece of Sherlock's extraordinary speech means this episode has to be considered a triumph. The deduction at the end, and the resolution to the mystery, are pacey and satisfying.

The bittersweet ending is perfect too. Having detected the "signs of three", Sherlock, ever the loner, leaves the wedding early, as foreshadowed...

Sherlock: The Empty Hearse

"What did he say?"

"F..."

"Cough."

I'm so very late in writing up this season of Sherlock (and, yet, much else... I have sooooo many sets of notes to write up!) that it feels so much has been said in the blogosphere already about this first episode already, particularly about its interaction with online fandom, with which this episode often feels like a dialogue, that it's supposedly far too metatextual for its own good, and that this episode doesn't really function as a whodunit.

To all this I shall briefly point out that the episode simply had to address the huge cliffhanger at the end of the last series, indeed it had to devote a whole episode to Sherlock's return and it's consequences. This pretty much removes the possibility of structuring this episode around a traditional whodunit format, and what's wrong with a bit of format-stretching anyway? And while, contradictory to what has been said by many commenters, we do in fact get an "official" explanation of Sherlock's survival (with cheeky caveats!), this was never the real point; what people have really waited two years for is the reaction to Sherlock's resurrection, especially from John. And we are not disappointed.

Far more interesting are the characters, the story beats and the series' traditional wit. And the latter of these has always been somewhat metatextual.

With all that out of the way...

The episode needs a murder plot to chug away in the background while all the character stuff happens, but this time it it (rightly) kept in the background, albeit with the character of Lord Moran harking back nicely to The Empty House. The terrorist plot itself is little more than a superficial retread of V for Vendetta, but that isn't a bad thing; this is a nice little shorthand for the viewer so that this subplot doesn't take up too much time.

The thing that is lingered on, and rightly so, is Sherlock's return, and it's consequences. Because time has not stood still over the last two years: John has got engaged (and Mrs Hudson, hilariously, assumes that it's to a man!), although 221B Baker Street is fortunately untenanted. Molly has a boyfriend who looks suspiciously like Sherlock, and the blogosphere abounds with theories on how Sherlock may have survived.

Sherlock's reveal to John is hilarious, of course, coming as it does in the middle of John's proposal to Mary, who is quite wonderful. Hilariously, Sherlock's explanation is punctuated by various acts of violence on him by John, which lead them to be thrown out of various restaurants and have to continue their conversation in progressively shabbier eateries. Mary, of course, likes him.

Mycroft knew, of course. And he and Sherlock have an insightful chat, over games of chess and Operation, about Sherlock's feelings of isolation without John there to be with him during his cases. But John, adrenaline junkie that he is, is quickly bored without the fix that Sherlock's cases give him, and quickly gets himself kidnapped for reasons which will go unexplained for a couple of episodes. This gives Sherlock a good chance to bond with Mary as they set out to rescue him.

We end with all back to the original status quo, and with a glimpse of a mysterious baddie. This episode is a wild ride, but it is far from self-contained. Sherlock suddenly feels far more like a serial drama than it did. Onwards, then...

Doctor Who: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

"Egyptian queen or not, I shall put you across my knee and spank you."

I'll admit I wasn't concentrating 100% on first viewing, but I was, er, distracted. Yes, distracted. Deliriously, wonderfully so. I'll say no more!!! Suffice to say that I've watched it again and was blown away. I haven't been as harsh on Chris Chibnall's scripts in the past as others have been, but his episodes have never been my favourites. Until now.

There's a tendency, under the present reign of the Moff, for Doctor Who to concoct episodes out off the maddest possible combinations of characters and high concepts just because it's cool. It's a high risk strategy, placing huge demands on the nuts and bolts of the script to hold it all together, but when it works, it's just brilliant. And that's what this is. The script just sings.

Yes, we have the eponymous dinosaurs on a spaceship, and the CGI is mostly convincing. But we also have Queen Nefertiti(!), an Edwardian big game hunter played by Lestrade from Sherlock, Rory's dad, played by Mark Williams of The Fast Show, and two delightfully camp robots voiced by David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Oh, and a massive beach with big skies that's actually the engine room for a spaceship. All this has got to be crammed into forty-two minutes, which is seemingly impossible. Thing is, though, it works brilliantly, and that's because of a brilliantly structured plot. Case in point: surely the opening sequence must be more crammed with stuff than any previous episode? That's some tight plotting, yet the whole thing is done with such lightness of touch, and the dialogue sparkles.

The dinosaurs are great, and cool set-pieces abound, from the Doctor, Rory and Brian riding a triceratops to Amy and Riddell shooting at raptors. The villain- essentially a pirate / banker type moral blank space- is suitably nasty, murdering a whole ship full of Silurians for a profit. Interestingly, the Doctor leaves him to die at the end, which is rather reminiscent of his treatment of Cassandra, two incarnations ago, in The End of the World. Also interesting is that, for the second episode in a row, we're reminded that the villain has no idea who the Doctor is. All traces of his existence have been erased. This is definitely leading to something…

Also interesting is the developing arc between the Doctor and the Ponds, whom he now sees only every few months. In fact, before he goes to pick them up he revealingly says that he "(hasn't) seen them for ages". Also interesting is that Amy is pointedly made to look very Doctorish when she discovers the Silurian backstory by pushing some buttons, in front of Nefertiti and Riddell, especially when she insists that "I will not have flirting companions!" Steven Moffat has been quoted as saying that companions are there as the audience's representatives, through whose eyes we see the Doctor's adventures. When he starts allowing his companions to be so clearly portrayed as Doctorish, this is definitely a harbinger of the Ponds leaving. Amy even voices to the Doctor her fear that the Doctor is visiting them less and less often, and that one day she will once again be left waiting for a raggedy Doctor who never comes.

Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall

“Don’t be dead. Will you do that just for me?”

OK, I’ll say it straight up: THIS POST IS RIDDLED WITH SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE THEN LOOK AWAY NOW. SERIOUSLY. I MEAN IT.

Right, now that the formalities have been dispensed with… that was excellent telly. Superb, in fact. Steve Thompson has come good at last. Even so, it wasn’t quite as good as either of the Steven Moffat scripts (it lacked the spark and wasn’t quite as clever), or as good as Mark Gatiss’ The Great Game (the cleverest of them all). That’s to praise with faint damn, of course, but Thompson is no Steven Moffat. Similarly, we Doctor Who fans know all too well that Toby Haynes is a first rate director (I bet the Nina Simone stuff was played back during recording. Nice.), and he's done a first rate job here. He’s no Paul McGuigan, though. Then again, who is? Actually, let’s not allow the fact that other episodes of this superlative series are even better distract us from how bloody good this is.

The framing device, with the first scene being John telling us that Sherlock is dead and the story then unfolding in flashback, is utterly predictable, but that’s the joy of it. And yes, even the fact that it’s undercut in the final scene by a blatantly not-dead Sherlock is predictable. But again, that’s the joy of it. The cleverness is in the little things and the characterisation.

A lot of stuff pays off here, from Donovan’s suspicions about Holmes to Holmes’ relationship with the lovely Molly; at last he finally says something nice to her, and a bloody good thing too! I just want to hug her whenever she’s on screen. I suspect she had a lot to do with how Sherlock faked his death, although there’s quite a lot to be explained. There was a body! It was buried! And yet today we find out that a new series is on the way. Yay!

Both Cumberbatch and Freeman are extraordinary here, giving us a much wider emotional range than they’ve previously been called upon to show. But it’s Andrew Scott who’s the revelation here, managing to square the circle of being suitably and terrifyingly psychopathic without crossing the line into pantomime villain territory. This is Moriarty as the Joker, and it works. He’s a very disturbed individual, with a death wish because he’s “bored”. He defeats Sherlock, yet he’s the one who is, seemingly, genuinely dead. His own life means less to him than the silly little game he's playing. He’s clever enough to virtually warp reality itself, creating a world in which Sherlock is a fraud, but what does it bring him in the end?

Interestingly, this is an episode in which all the clever people fail. The fall of Sherlock, the apparent death of Moriarty and the accidental betrayal of his brother by Sherlock can perhaps be set against the humanity of John and, arguably, Molly, who finally gets at least some appreciation from the man she loves. Even Donovan and the journalist (it’s great to see Katharine Parkinson, but even better to see the tabloids getting skewered)) are arguably portrayed as too clever for their own good. This is the triumph of the ordinary. Appropriate; this episode is clever but, compared to other episodes, not too clever. But it certainly has heart.

Still, I thought last series ended in a big cliffhanger… how will they get out of this one? I suspect empty houses may be involved somehow…

Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville

“Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

Ah well, it had to happen. We move from poetry to prose, and from the superlative to the merely very good. Also, this script is not so dense with subtext as last weeks, meaning this review won’t be as long. Gatiss’ script here may play to his supposed macabre strengths but, rather good though it is, it can’t complete with the extraordinary episode he gave us last series. Still, judged without reference to its illustrious predecessors this is a highly impressive ninety minutes of television. Plus I had the added fun being able to compare it to a Conan Doyle original that, for once, I know well.

Se, Henry Knight, not Sir Henry Baskerville. See what they did there? The print original may have been a baronet, not a knight, but it still made me smile. Plus we have a Mortimer and a Stapleton- both women, helping almost to smooth out the gender imbalance of the source material. There’s even a Barrymore, but this chap is a soldier, an arrogant sod and, worse, a Tory. He doesn’t buttle.

We have some nice misdirection, too; Sherlock tricks us into thinking he’s going to just send Watson to Devon, and not go himself. There’s a red herring- Gary and Billy- to take the place of the escaped convict subplot in the novel. And, of course, it was Frankland, not Stapleton, what dunnit. Plus the circumstances are entirely different.

We get a fair amount of fanwank here- I love the opening scenes, and particularly the Cluedo line. We get the “Once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever remains- however improbable- must be true. But, most interestingly, a drugged-up Holmes comes to doubt his own belief in reason and empirical truth, the very foundation of who he is, and is left literally shaking at the possibility of having seen something truly supernatural. Cumberbatch is extraordinary here. And the chemistry between him and the equally excellent Martin Freeman continues to be superb.

Oh, and it’s left nicely ambiguous, early on, whether Sherlock’s cold turkey relates just to cigarettes or to something stronger. We know what the reference to “seven per cent” means, but does it infer the same thing in a twenty-first century context, I wonder?

Paul McGuigan is superlative as always, but this is something we’re tending to take for granted by now, and a more linear plot gives him less room to be creative. The many moments with Sherlock making deductive leaps (always fun) look fab, though. And the location shots of Dartmoor look truly awesome, far better than any previous version of this story that I’ve seen.

Oh, and I don’t believe the Morse code message was explained. Something for next week?

All the same, though, excellent whodunnit and superb character piece though this is, it seems to be lacking a certain extra something. Partly it may be a case of middle episode disease, although this is far superior to The Blind Banker. But something’s missing.

Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia

“You don’t trust your own secret service?”

“Naturally not. They spy on people for money.”

Well, what a very cheeky resolution to the cliffhanger that was. It was an anti-climax of sorts, but in such a knowing way that you’re too busy admiring the chutzpah to mind. I love the ringtone. In fact, although I wasn’t sure before, I think the silently mouthed “sorry” may have entirely won me over to Andrew Scott’s Moriarty.

This is as good as television gets. Let’s just take the superlatives and the gushing as read so we can talk about it, shall we? I’d just like to emphasise that, although the performances are uniformly great here (Mark Gatiss’ arch performance as Mycroft has also won me over at this point, and Steven Moffat’s script is extraordinary even for him, Paul McGuigan has to be singled out for special praise. He must surely be the finest director working in British TV. There are so many little tricks that take my brat away here, from the parade of clients at the start, the flashback to the mystery of the hiker with Sherlock discoursing to Irene, on her sofa, in the middle of the field (Douglas Adams, anyone?); to Sherlock’s subsequent change of location from the field to his bed, in one shot; to all those little tricks with text on the screen that we’ve come to know so well- I love the question marks! This is all shot as wittily as it is written.

There are so many threads to this intricate story from the very beginning, as we’re immediately bombarded with multiple problems, not all of which are red herrings. But the intricacy of the storyline doesn’t mean that character is at all neglected; in fact there’s loads of character development here. Sarah is long gone; John has since had a string of girlfriends, all of whom have dumped him because his most important relationship is clearly with Sherlock. Sherlock is shown to be much closer to Mrs Hudson than we’ve seen before. There are heavy hints, after Irene “dies”, that Sherlock may have a recurring habit of turning to some rather dodgy substances when emotionally low. John and Mycroft are clearly much better acquainted by now. But we can’t go any further without talking about Irene Adler.

Ah yes, “The Woman”. I’m not sure that such a vague “brand” name would be much good for a dominatrix advertising her services, but perhaps she doesn’t need to, and that’s the point. She’s such a brilliant and multi-faceted character, played to perfection by Lara Pulver. She’s Sherlock’s match, and literally, er, beats him at one point, but she isn’t quite his mirror image. She isn’t exactly a repressed “high-functioning psychopath” like Sherlock; she’s very self-controlled but emotionally relates to other people in a very normal way. It isn’t about the intellectual challenge for her; it’s about playing power games. And there’s a very sharp distinction between her and Moriarty, too. Moriarty is a disturbed psychopath, whereas Irene’s power games are obviously all about the fun, and even more obviously sexual in nature. She’s not interested in power for its own sake, but only in fun, and the slightly more mundane matter of personal protection through the possession of secrets. And she’s so, so sexy. I hope she’d be gentle with me, but I so would.

The “other woman” (and one we’ll be seeing a lot more of in future episodes, I expect) is Molly. And we seem to get an explicit contrast between her and Irene. She’s jealous, obviously (Sherlock “recognises Irene’s “body” through “not her face”), but her reaction to Sherlock’s faux pas at the Christmas party is very revealing; she seems to actively enjoy being on the receiving end of Sherlock’s unintended verbal humiliation. It’s hard not to see this as an obviously intentional binary opposition between her and Irene.

Oh, and his infatuation with “The Woman” leads to much dialogue speculating on Sherlock’s sexuality. It seems most likely to me that he’s asexual, and that his attraction to Irene is genuine but has nothing to do with squishy body parts and nothing to do with her gender. He’s capable of bonding with others to an extent (I love the conspiratorial naughtiness between him and John in the palace) but he seems to have no sexual urges at all. She obviously likes him, though, even though she never refers to him as anything other than “Mr Holmes”.

We have some wonderfully metatextual fun here, as always; the parade of cases at the start are blogged about by John under such titles as “The Speckled Blonde” and “The Geek Interpreter”. This is cool, although it also carries the worrying implication that Moffat believes there probably won’t be another series so he might as well use up the titles. Of similar coolness is the fact that Sherlock is always being mistakenly assumed to always wear a deerstalker, based on a single photograph! Even better is his very individual method of calling the police.

There’s a lot of delightfully cheeky lèse-majesté here, too. I love Sherlock’s quip about his illustrious client (there goes another title…) being “someone with a navy”, and the fun with the ashtray and God Save the Queen on the violin. I bet Brenda watched this, too! It would also be fun to speculate on which young, female royal Moffat had in mind, but I’m not touching that one with a bargepole.

The final fifteen minutes are pretty much orgasmic. The bang bang bang of inspired revelations is just exquisite, but not quite as cool as Mycroft’s observation that Sherlock chooses to use his intellect not to be a scientist or a philosopher, but a detective, and once wanted to be a pirate. He may be asexual, but he certainly has a romantic side. And this is the final thing we see, as swords flash in Karachi and rumours of Irene’s death are about to be exaggerated. This might be a little implausible, if we were to nit-pick, but it’s so, so cool, and the moment has so been earned. As I said, this is as good as television gets.

V for Vendetta (2006)

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

Well, it’s the Fifth of November. What other film was I going to review, eh?

It’s a bit of a surprise to realise that it’s taken me until my seventeenth movie review to get to a film from the present century. And, well, it’s not all that good, which I suppose is to be expected. With older films, by definition, the ones which have remained prominent are going to be the better ones, while the same weeding-out process hasn’t happened for newer films. And this one is no classic.

It’s just far too long and badly paced, for a start, and full of pointless, meaningless visual flourishes- why do we have to see V playing Domino Rally, for example, or those embarrassing scenes of V in the fires of Larkhill contrasted with Evie in the rain? Natalie Portman is incredibly wooden, too, and completely lacks the charisma needed to carry the film. The dialogue is not exactly naturalistic, and unnecessarily Americanised- I rather suspect that 99.9% of Americans are smart enough to guess what a “lift” is, and don’t need the word changing to “elevator”. Yes, there are lots of great speeches from V, and moving evocations of the human yearning for freedom, but most of this (possibly all) is lifted from the original, superlative graphic novel. (Well, strip in Warrior and then limited series by DC, strictly speaking. And yes, the fact that I used the term “limited series” does indeed mark me out as a Marvel kid!)

In fact, I’m somewhat surprised that watching this today has made me rather more sympathetic to Alan Moore for famously and dramatically taking his name off the film, and not only because we long-haired men from the East Midlands must stick together. The original graphic novel, barring the obvious references to Section 28, was about the abstract themes of fascism v. anarchy, not current events. Yet the film dilutes this message with lots of blatant and inappropriate contemporary references which have already dated horribly. The tipping point for Dietrich, which causes him to be executed rather than imprisoned, is his illegal possession of an antique Koran. There’s discussion of sinister contemporary euphemisms such as “rendition” and “collateral”. V wears a suicide bomb vest. Worst of all, the St Mary's virus being revealed as a government plot evokes all of those contemptible conspiracy theories about September 11^th, 2001.

Hugo Weaving is fantastic, but he’s not so much playing a character as an actor playing an actor. Although V is brilliant, he’s a spectacle, or more appropriately an idea, not a person. He can’t be the “star” of the film and the audience can’t identify with him. None of this is to imply the character lacks depth, but he lacks a psychology as such, and is far too distanced from the audience for us to identify with him. He isn’t an unambiguous hero, either- whatever his reasons, he tortures Evie, and this torture includes waterboarding, a fairly blatant and unfortunate comparison with the fatuously named “War on Terror”. There’s a clear moral equivalence here, but it’s a shame that such a broad and interesting point should be diluted with an already-dated contemporary reference.

There’s a lot of good world-building here, which only fails to come off because of the Wachowski Brothers’ insistence on such a slow pace. Like many recent films, the film could have done with a lot more editing. And yet, the 1984-style Britain works well. John Hurt (who once played Winston Smith, of course!) is great as “Chancellor” Adam Sutler, and Tim-Pigott Smith is superb as Creedy, head of the new Gestapo. I’m not sure the title “Chancellor” is realistic, mind: it’s far too propaganda-defeatingly close to Hitler, and the title in Britain refers to the Finance Minister and would be an unlikely title for a head of government.

Still, the many sequences where Sutler’s face looms large on a big screen as he berates his underlings work well in reminding us that we’re looking at a totalitarian state. This is a man who casually bans the 1812 Overture and speaks of old buildings with contempt, in contrast to the highly cultured V. Naturally, he started out as a Tory. The Fox News sequences with Prothero are also fun.

The structure of the film- sequences of V, from Evie’s perspective, intercut with the investigation of the murders and the Larkhill backstory, from Inspector Finch’s perspective, would work very well indeed if the pace wasn’t so damn slow. It’s fun to note that Rupert Graves, here playing Finch’s Detective Sergeant, has recently been promoted to Inspector in the BBC’s recent Sherlock.

There’s one particularly chilling moment surrounding V’s murder of the paedophile bishop; the bishop is under surveillance, but his disgusting proclivities are tolerated to the extent that there are jokes about “children’s hour at the abbey”. This demonstrates another horrifying fact about totalitarianism; it asks people to trade their freedom for security yet fails to provide that security. Someone like the bishop would never be tolerated in an open society. Interesting, by the way, that the paedophile should be a Catholic priest (he talks of “mass”). That’s one bit that hasn’t dated.

Stephen Fry is quite sweet as Dietrich, even though he’s pretty much playing Stephen Fry. It’s completely unrealistic, of course, that his little satirical skit would be allowed to reach the screen, but it’s fun, and the brutal reaction by the State is suitably horrifying. I’m not sure we need this character, though; he certainly wasn’t in the original and he’s basically V without the coolness. Yes, he illustrates the horrors of state homophobia, but the story of Valerie does that far more eloquently and effectively (I cried. And I usually have a heart of stone when watching films.), but that, of course, is lifted entirely from Moore’s original.

The whole thing is wrapped up quite nicely, I suppose, with V accepting he has to die for his moral failings but not before he kills both Sutler and Creedy in a fit of coolness. It’s also nice that part of Moore’s anarchist message is retained; V intends to destroy the old order but has no intention of dictating what should come next. I’m no anarchist, but this is a nice moment. Also satisfying is that Finch does in fact find Evie and the explosives, but allows the bombing to go ahead. But V’s dying confession of love for Evie falls fairly flat, given Portman’s wooden performance and the fact that V isn’t really a character at all. And it’s unfortunate that crowds of people dressed in V masks now makes me think of the Anonymous movement.

Sherlock: The Great Game

“Any ideas?”

“Seven, so far.”

Blimey. This is not so much a story as a television equivalent of one of Conan Doyle’s collections of short stories from the Strand magazine, with a connecting twist. And yet, it fits together, and it fits together so well. This is a superb piece of television, and proof that, although his work on Doctor Who may not always have shown it until recently, Mark Gatiss is a bloody fantastic writer. And, by the way, after last episode’s stint by Euros Lyn, a bit meh in comparison, Paul McGuigan is helming this one.

The opening, in Minsk, is deft and witty although, following a line in the first episode where Holmes mentions sending Mrs Hudson’s husband to the gallows or some such barbarity, it continues a rather worrying pro-capital punishment trend. Less of this, please.

Gatiss is obviously rather more of a Holmes fanboy than Moffat, or at least shows it more. This is no bad thing. Sherlock shooting at the wall, Sherlock not realising that the Earth goes round the Sun (which will be important later, and also introduces a theme, about which more later on), Sherlock’s criticisms of John’s blog- these things are a joy. Not only is the latter the sort of metatextual fun I always love, it’s doubly so, as the text is referring not only to itself but to the text that inspired it, which is also referring to itself. I love this sort of thing. And yes, when Lestrade mentioned that everyone at Scotland Yard was also following John’s blog, I did indeed have an orgasm.

Gatiss, as is his privilege as showrunner, inserts himself into the narrative as Mycroft, and gives a wonderfully knowing performance, both in his acting and in the lines he gives himself. The character of Mycroft is, of course, fundamentally metatextual: he has all the observational powers of Sherlock, yet he exists purely as comic effect and plot convenience, and the wonderful thing is that the character himself is intelligent enough to realise this, and to tip a knowing wink to the audience. Anyway, he’s here to introduce The Bruce-Partington Plans just as Lestrade who, admittedly with a somewhat meatier role, is referencing The Five Orange Pips.

Pip one is a pair of trainers. Is that not a glorious sentence? The villain- and, let’s be clear, there’s no mystery that it’s Moriarty- is a right bastard, putting a collar bomb on the first of three victims. This one, at least, lives, unlike the third. It must be a horrible way to die.

Moving swiftly on past Molly and her new boyfriend Jim (“gay!”), whom she presumably parades in front of Sherlock out of spite, we solve this first puzzle and have John in an amusing scene with Mycroft. We do, of course, know that this will dovetail with the main plot(s), for such is television drama, but the comedy is well fun.

Pip two is the Ian Monkford stuff, where Sherlock, by pretending to be an old friend of Ian’s, hugely offends his wife. Yes, this may illustrate his “sociopathic” side, but it’s retrospectively clear that he suspects her of profiting from Ian’s disappearing act. Anyway, this one’s solved too. Incidentally, Sherlock seems to have an iPhone GPS, as I do. Yay consumerism.

Anyway, pip three concerns a star of daytime telly, and Sherlock dully immerses himself in the online forum of said show. This links quite strongly to the earlier-mentioned solar system stuff; something which might normally be dismissed has having suddenly become relevant. And the idea of Moriarty as a consulting criminal (this is not in Conan Doyle, and is in fact an inspired innovation) is developed here.

We’re introduced to Sherlock’s “homeless network” which, however heartless a concept it may seem, is just a modernisation of the “Baker Street Irregulars”. And pips four and five, neither of which get much action via Sherlock’s new pink phone, involve a dead security guard and a fake Vermeer painting, and said memory stick.

Oh, and the Czech assassin is “The Golem”, and he turns out to be Nosferatu (which I will, at some point, review along with, yes, Shadow of the Vampire), showing that Gatiss has at least a passing acquaintance with my beloved German silent films.

It turns out that pip number four revolves around a supernova in 1858. Clever, as is our security guard. Dead, as is our professor, to the sound of Holst’s The Planets. I love this plot. We get, of course, a resolution to the Bruce-Partington stuff before we move to the big confrontation with Moriarty (on this viewing, Andrew Scott is an inspired choice) at the pool.

The bit where we suspect, just for a moment, that John may be Moriarty (!) is inspired, but instead we get a Mexican stand-off, and a cliffhanger…

Sherlock: A Study in Pink

“Why can’t people just think?”

We begin with Watson’s… no, John’s flashback to the war in Afghanistan, so beginning with a very neat parallel to Conan Doyle’s original stories, of which we’ll be seeing many. Martin Freeman is perfect casting; he may be more or less typecast as an “everyman” character, but there are worse kinds of typecasting, and he’s a very, very good everyman.

The direction from Paul McGuigan, more usually encountered in films, is superb from the outset. I particularly love the way the screen briefly divides in two as we shift scenes, the use of focus, and of course the creative use of text. Together with Steven Moffat’s first class script and the first-rate cast, this makes for a breathtakingly good but of telly, marred only by a few of Moffat’s old tricks turning up again- the public phone ringing, the line about arch enemies, Sherlock’s jibe about “telly”- but that’s a very minor criticism.

Interesting that the title sequence should focus on speed and the modern icons of London; that’s a statement of intent about the kind of series we’re getting- modern, stylish and fast-paced. Interesting, too (SPOILERS- this is a Whodunnit, remember!) that the first line is “Get a cab.” Cheeky, Moffat, cheeky…

Pacey this certainly is; we get the basic shape of the mystery in the first few minutes and it isn’t much longer that Sherlock and John, whom we’ve only just met, have become flatmates and firmly established themselves as great characters. That’s the excellent script but also, of course, great performances from Freeman and the magnetic Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s Wanda Ventham’s son, you know!

I love Sherlock’s deductions about John, but especially his mistake about Harry. It’s a nice character moment, but also foreshadows his similar deductions regarding the crime. We also meet Una Stubbs as Mrs “Not a Housekeeper” Hudson, whose main purpose is clearly to make the inevitable comments about Sherlock’s and John’s (it’s hard not to type Holmes’ and Watson’s!) sexuality.

There’s such a wit to the script. I love the treatment of Lestrade- resigned to needing Sherlock and honest about it in spite of everything. And, of course, Sherlock is overjoyed to see him, as this means a juicy little murder and a postponement of boredom. It’s played for laughs, but this is recognisably the character we know from Conan Doyle.

Again, the first thing Sherlock and John do upon leaving 221B Baker Street is to hail a cab!!! Their conversation in the cab is great, though, as is John’s meeting with Sergeant Sally Donovan, who’s convinced Sherlock is a dangerous psychopath. The ultimate subtext of all this is, of course, that John himself is a danger junkie, with psychosomatic injuries which reflect the fact that he misses war. If Sherlock is a disturbed individual, then John is no better.

The scene where Sherlock examines Jennifer Wilson’s body is amazing, and so it should be: it’s the most important scene in the episode. McGuigan’s pioneering device of superimposing bits of text over the screen, as earlier with the phones, is genius. As, of course, is Sherlock.

I love the fun Moffat has with “Rache”; this rather undercuts the confidence of those of us who assume we know what’s going on because we’ve read A Study in Scarlet. As will become very clear, we don’t.

Sherlock buggers off, leaving John to meet (SPOILERS!) Mycroft. Mark Gatiss puts on the archest performance I’ve ever seen, even from him. And that’s saying something.

The final indication that knowledge of the novel won’t help us is when the American in the cab turns out to be a red herring. So, after the drugs bust (ha!), and a bit more coolness from Sherlock, we reach the endgame. It’s a satisfying one, using Sherlock’s genius and personality against him; not only is it an exciting climax but it tells us a lot about our eponymous protagonist. It’s fitting that he never chooses a pill; it would damage the character for us to see him as either definitively fallible (and dead!) or definitively infallible.

We get a great ending, with John saving the day, Mycroft revealing himself in a hilarious scene, and “Moriarty”…