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...

Sherlock: His Last Vow

"I'm a doctor. I know how to sprain people."

After two episodes which play with structure we get something resembling a more traditional plot, although it is not so much a whodunit as a question of precisely how Sherlock will bring down the nefarious Charles Augustus Magnusssen. There's a big twist, certainly, in the revelation that Magnussen's "documents" are stored only in his head, but the structure of this episode is less traditional than it appears.

The unusually prominent political subtext is something new, too. Magnussen is a fairly transparent analogue for Rupert Murdoch, of whom I, as a Guardian reader who has been following the whole phone hacking saga since long before it was fashionable to do so, am most certainly not a fan. I find the description of red top tabloids' activities as blackmail quite apt. It's also nice to see Sherlock shooting the bounder at the end. As he says, "The personal freedom of anyone you've ever met is a fantasy."

But none of this is really the point: this episode is about Mary, whom Magnussen is blackmailing on account of her apparently quite bloodstained past, and the strain which this revelation places on her relationship with John. John's fury, their awkward estrangement over Christmas, and their deeply moving reconciliation are all beautifully written and acted. As per the original Charles Augustus Milverton, however, Sherlock gives not a jot about why she is being blackmailed.

Lars Mikkelsen is splendidly slimy as Magnussen, with a clear undercurrent of sexual molestation in his treatment of both Lady Smallwood and John. But it is, as ever, the small character beats that make this episode shine, from Molly slapping Sherlock for lapsing back into his Class A habit to every scene between John and Mary. Sherlock's explanation to John that he has pretended to be in love with Janine, even to the point of engagement, just to get at her boss, reminds us what a sociopath he is, but it's nice to see she gets her revenge by selling kiss-and-tell stories to the tabloids, which ties in nicely with the episode's themes.

The scenes inside Sherlock's head, after Mary shoots him, are an act of directorial genius, the highlight being Moriarty in his padded shell, doubling as a nice bit of foreshadowing. Appropriately, it is one Louis Moffat who plays the young Sherlock.

Obviously, the highlight of the whole episode is Sherlock and Mycroft being caught smoking by their mother, especially in the light of Magnussen's description of Mycroft as the most powerful man in the country. But the climactic scene highlights the parallels between Sherlock and Magnussen: both are sociopaths, both have "mind palaces", but the parallels end there. 

It looks as though Magnussen has won, but Sherlock manages to cut the Gordian Knot by killing him. It looks as though he faces exile and certain death for this murder, but then we get our cliffhanger: Moriarty is back...

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...

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.

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: 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.

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”…