TV Review: Sherlock

Warning: Here there be spoilers

After two long years the series Sherlock returned to American television with three new episodes, once again proving that the British model of television production is a far cry from its American counterpart.  American networks are reducing their commitment to new shows (Sleepy Hollow is arguably the biggest hit of the season but Fox is only producing 13 episodes instead of the usual 22), but for the BBC to call three episodes a season is pushing things well beyond where US networks are willing to go.

The third season of Sherlock is, in my view, the weakest of the three seasons taken as a whole.  It did not produce an episode as weak as season one’s The Blind Banker or season two’s The Hounds of Baskerville, but neither did it approach the giddy heights of The Great Game or A Scandal in Belgravia.  It never really produced a reasonable explanation for Sherlock not being dead after the events of The Reichenbach Fall, although it did have a great deal of fun in refusing to play fair and say what happened.  And the season finale dealt with a villain so underwhelming that the possible return of Moriarty in the waning seconds of the third episode is a decided relief.

But let’s focus on the positive, starting with the acting of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.  While I still consider Cumberbatch to be the third best Holmes ever (Jeremy Brett is numero uno, followed by Basil Rathbone) Cumberbatch and Freeman are the best pair to inhabit the Doyle characters.  They are, to steal a line from The Simpsons, the original Odd Couple: Holmes is dynamic, flamboyant, a force of nature, while Watson is quiet, unassuming, and possesses an unending supply of British reserve.  Watson knows Holmes so well, yet is endlessly surprised by him.  This process of discovery is wonderfully portrayed by Freeman in the facial reactions he gives to Holmes.

The third season continues to flesh out the supporting players while adding one major new one.  Lestrade (Holmes can never remember his first name, a tip of the cap to the Doyle Canon which never supplied him with one) is still defending Holmes, still there when he calls for help even if it turns out he needs assistance with his Best Man speech at Watson’s wedding.  Molly Hooper, the morgue attendant at St. Bart’s Hospital, is still horribly in love with Holmes even after being given greater access to the object of her affections and thus a chance to see what a jerk he is.  Anderson, Holmes biggest detractor on the police force, is now the leader of a Holmes fan group.  Holmes’ brother Mycroft (played by series co-creator Mark Gatiss, who gave himself a great part) is still as supercilious and contemptuous as ever.

The addition is Mary Morstan Watson (Amanda Abbington), the woman Watson proposes to just as Holmes comes out of hiding after being thought dead for two years, and whom he marries is episode two.  Creators Gatiss and Steven Moffatt do a great job of inserting her into the delicate chemistry of Holmes and Watson; she’s not an impediment to their further adventures, she’s a catalyst.  Holmes immediately deduces there is something “off” about her (when he first reads her the word “Liar” is prominent among his deductions), but he allows Watson’s feelings to cloud his judgment.  It’s just possible she “gets” Holmes even better than Watson does (“I’m not John,” she says to Holmes at one point, “I can tell when you’re fibbing.”).

The biggest weakness of season three is that it doesn’t quite measure up to the expectations that have been established.  Unfair, but true.  It is probably impossible for the creators to ever match A Scandal in Belgravia, which had a wonderfully twisty plot that somehow all pulled together, snappy dialog (Watson: “I was a soldier, I killed people!” Holmes: “You were a doctor.”  Watson: “I had bad days!”) and the heady infusion of Lara Pulver as Irene Adler, aka “The Woman.”  Episode one of season three, The Empty Hearse, was cleverly set up but ultimately its “blow up Parliament on Guy Fawkes Day” plot came across as a mild rip-off of (or homage to) V For Vendetta.  Probably the best episode of season three was the middle one, The Sign of Three, where Holmes solves one attempted murder and thwarts another during his Best Man speech at Watson’s wedding.  Actually, the eight year old ring bearer in fact solves the crimes, which has to be a little embarrassing for Holmes.  The third episode, His Last Vow, featured a villain whose modus operandi made little sense; he was a blackmailer who apparently memorized whatever dirty information he got his hands on and then destroyed the supporting documents.  His entire ability to blackmail people was based on a bluff; all it would take is one person to sue him and his game would be up.

His Last Vow also demonstrates the increasing tendency of the stories to autocorrect Holmes’ erroneous deductions.  Early on Holmes is shot and he deduces that his life depends on whether he falls backwards or forwards.  Let’s skip over the utter implausibility of that and skip ahead to where Holmes states that the shooter aimed carefully and in fact did not want him dead.  So the shooter knew that Holmes would choose the correct way to fall?  That an ambulance would arrive in the usual 8 minutes and not be delayed long enough to allow Holmes to bleed to death?  That it is possible to shoot someone in the abdomen and know EXACTLY how long it will take them to bleed to death?  Holmes was either wrong when he decided that falling backwards was the only way to survive, or wrong when he decided the shooter didn’t want to kill him.  Either way, he is fallible.

Of course these complaints are dwarfed by the cleverness of the plots, the subtlety of the acting and the visual flair of the direction.  His Last Vow ended with a cliffhanger almost as impossible as the one that ended season two, with an apparently alive Moriarty declaring he was back and asking, “Miss me?”  After watching all three episodes of season three of Sherlock, I have to say yes, we did.  Season three started out with the creators of Sherlock resurrecting Holmes; let’s see if they can bring his arch nemesis back to life as well.  The problem is that it might take another two years.