Reviewing - Sherlock
I’m so glad I gave this show a second chance.
My mom and sister were the ones who first introduced me to this series, and when I sat down to watch “A Study in Pink” with them, I was expecting a 30-45 minute experience. Most television shows run that length, so that’s what I was anticipating. I did not know that each Sherlock episode runs for about an hour and a half, so as a result I found the first episode to be plodding along at a fairly slow pace compared to what I was expecting. I left the show behind for some time, and only got back into it when I was dating my wife Jenna. This time, I went in expecting that I was basically sitting down to watch a movie. With that frame of mind, I found the show immensely more entertaining.
There’s a lot that’s great about this show. Firstly, the writing is brilliant. The stories keep you hooked from beginning to end, encouraging you to try and keep up with Sherlock’s intellect. The ‘deduction’ moments are always enormous fun as Sherlock extrapolates a person’s entire life story from something like a a stray hair on their sleeve or a nearly indiscernible mark just above their lip. Secondly, the way they depict characters interacting with digital technology is exciting and creative. Instead of simply showing us the screen that the characters are looking at, the relevant text is superimposed into the shot, fading in or out at optimally dramatic speeds. They also do this with particular effectiveness when Sherlock is ‘deducing’ all in his head. All the characters see is Holmes closing his eyes and shaking his head back and forth, but we see a flurry of information fly across the screen, getting an inside look at the goings-on within his mind. All of this is done so effortlessly and beautifully. Thirdly, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are perfectly casted for the roles of Sherlock and Watson, respectively. Cumberbatch gives us a Holmes thoroughly uninterested in anything that smells of sentiment or human emotion, while Freeman provides the empathetic half of their equation that makes them such an iconic duo. Both of them get their share in the spotlight – though it is Sherlock’s name on the marquis, he’s nothing without his Watson.
Season One
A Study In Pink is a home-run in terms of a pilot episode. Seeing Holmes and Watson meet each other and solve their first case together is delightful fun. Their banter is brilliantly witty, and the handful of nods to the way people skeptically view their relationship is great too. The way the mystery is solved at the end is satisfying and dramatic, and it leaves us with one loose end that guarantees we’ll come back for another episode. Unfortunately, the second episode is my least favourite of the series. The episode essentially ignores the loose end from the previous episode and sends Sherlock on a wholly different case – and I felt that the banter and wittiness of the previous episode disappeared as a result. It wasn’t terrible, but I just don’t think it carries the magic of the rest of the show. The third episode brings us back to that level of excellence with a terrifying villain and a series of almost uncrackable cases. The season ends on a cliffhanger as many seasons of many shows do – but that’s hardly a crime. And if it is, it’s certainly one Sherlock will solve by the next episode.
Season Two
All three episodes of this season are a blast. “A Scandal In Belgravia” gives us a really fun new character – Irene Adler, or ‘The Woman’ as Sherlock calls her. This character is adapted from the original Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, and it’s a shame they didn’t give us more time with her in later episodes. She’s very similar to Sherlock’s arch nemesis Moriarty in that she seems very preoccupied with the character of Holmes. She’s also capable of sparring with him intellectually, which is something that few in this series can do. The difference is that whereas Moriarty is wholly evil, The Woman is a bit more in the gray area – and by that I mean she’s morally ambiguous at best. The way her and Sherlock dance around each other is really exciting – especially because she works hard to try and bring out any sign of emotion in him. There’s a great moment in this episode where she ‘stumps’ him, and seeing the look of panic or confusion in Sherlock’s eye is so satisfying.
“The Hounds of Baskerville” is a total curve ball and yet it fits right in with the rest of the series. It’s an episode that flirts with the supernatural horror genre without sacrificing any of Sherlock’s brilliant deductive scenes. What’s great about this season is exemplified in the moment where Sherlock sees one of the ‘gigantic hounds’ for himself. This season is about Sherlock finding flaws within himself and identifying his own weaknesses. When Sherlock starts sweating, that’s a big deal, and it makes for great storytelling. To that end, the last episode of the season similarly pushes Sherlock to the brink of total and complete failure. He’s been outsmarted, and we see Sherlock forced to make decisions that he never would have made otherwise.
Season Three
There’s so much to love about this show, and the first few minutes of the first episode of Season Three is a perfect example. The producers always give us important information, but they never give it to us in a way we’d expect. When Sherlock discusses a crime scene, for example, we see him magically transported out of his room at 221B Baker Street to the scene itself. When Sherlock is trying to solve a crime by sifting through information in his head, we’re taken to a metaphorical ‘mind palace’ to visually represent his struggling. In the first few minutes of Season Three’s first episode, we get the answer for how Sherlock pulled off his most daring feat yet – faking his own death. Or at least, that’s what we think we’re getting. We find out that this is only a theoretical answer dreamed up by one of the show’s characters – but because of the way it’s presented, we don’t know what to think of it until the moment the producers are ready to tell us. I love that! Storytelling is all about delivering information in exciting ways, and the producers of Sherlock are experts in this.
The reunion of Sherlock and Watson is an absolute blast – even if the storytelling and editing of this show sucked, it could still succeed on the chemistry of Cumberbatch and Freeman alone. Freeman really gets to show off his acting chops in “His Last Vow” with the addition of his love interest Mary Morstan. On that note, the character of Charles Augustus Magnussen – played by Lars Mikkelsen - absolutely captures every scene he’s in. It’s hard to believe that this show could introduce another antagonist with such scene-stealing prowess: we’ve had Moriarty and Irene Adler already, and neither of them overstayed their welcome by a long shot. If anything, this show has a knack for giving us brilliant villains and then getting rid of them too soon.
Netflix throws Sherlock’s 2016 one-off special “The Abominable Bride” into Season 3, and though in one sense it’s its own thing, it’s also whole-heartedly a part of the overarching story. What’s great about this episode is the gradual figuring-out of how it fits into the larger story arc. It’s also super-fun because it’s got a twinge of horror to it, just like “The Hounds of Baskerville” did. Although it’s not necessary to watch this before the next season, it’s just too much fun to miss.
Season Four
This is likely the last time Cumberbatch and Freeman will be onscreen together as Sherlock and Watson. The final episode certainly works hard to feel like a series finale, resolving one or two loose ends and peppering in a few callbacks to the very first episode. The first two episodes are really exciting. But even though “The Final Problem” is incredibly interesting, it seems a bit out of place compared to the rest of the show. There seems to be some hypnosis/mind control stuff going on, which is a bit hard to believe given that the rest of the show has worked hard to make things make some sort of sense. I get that Sherlock and Mycroft are impossibly smart, but the whole point of their intelligence is that we as the audience always end up saying “That train of logic – bizarre as it is – makes total sense”. The final episode has a character with a whole other level of brainpower that borders on the supernatural. I’m not sure if they gave us enough to justify being on board with that.
Watson’s ‘moment of weakness’ that occurs in this season is interesting, but I don’t really like the way they tried to resolve it. They kind of tried to make it ‘not a big deal’, which I suppose is a defendable standpoint given the context and the point in time at which this moment is revealed to others. But at the same time, what he did isn’t exactly something I want to be okay with. I love when they used it as an opportunity to talk about what it means to have a ‘perfect’ marriage and to be the perfect spouse, but to minimize Watson’s mistake isn’t really the way to do that, in my opinion.
That aside, this season was still fun, and the final episode was an absolute thrill ride. The Moriarty moment with the helicopter had my jaw on the floor the first time I watched it. It’s another great example of how the producers give us information bit-by-bit in just the right way to maximize dramatic tension. I loved it. The stakes were also incredibly high at every point of the episode, and we got to see Mycroft and Sherlock’s relationship laid bare. It was great.
It’s sad to say goodbye to such charismatic characters, but there’s always hope that they’ll be reunited at some point in the future. And if they don’t, this show certainly did more than enough to end on a satisfactory note. Even if this wasn’t the best season they’ve had, it was still worth the watch.