Few things have been waited for as eagerly as series 3 of Sherlock. The
last time we’d seen the infuriating but brilliant sleuth, he’d hurtled to his
death from the top of St. Bart’s hospital. Or had he? Through misdirection and
false theories aplenty (including an amusing nod to slash fiction, which no
doubt Mark Gatiss was mildly disturbed by when he first discovered, before
choosing to use as a force to his advantage), the show’s creators Gatiss and
Moffat finally revealed to us how the great detective did it, and it’s fair to
say that the reaction of the general audience was that of being underwhelmed.
Ignoring, for a second, just how muddling and convoluted it was, how many extra
players Sherlock’s escape plan entailed, the thing that disappointed the most
was the fact that the so-called independent, famously misanthropic man, had to
enlist the help of his older brother to get him out of a quagmire.
That little quibble aside, the first episode of this season had a few
treats, mainly in the form of Sherlock taking his sweet time revealing to
Watson that he was still alive, at the worst possible moment: when Watson was
about to propose. It was good to hear Molly had moved on from Sherlock, by
getting herself a new boyfriend, though later, when he emerged, we realised
we’d spoken too soon; the man looked like a bargain-basement Cumberbatch.
With all the characters being reunited, the plot sat on the back foot
somewhat, and when Sherlock realised that the so-called “underground terrorist
attack on London” was, quite literally, an UNDERGROUND terrorist attack, you
weren’t terribly surprised. Especially when we’d been shown footage of a
shifty-looking man wandering on a Tube, and then seemingly disappearing. As far
as convoluted plots have gone, this wasn’t Gatiss’ best work.
If the first episode of the series disappointed, then the second episode
truly flabbergasted with how poor it was. Every now and then, on a
twenty-episodes-a-series show like Family Guy or Friends, the show’s creators
will do a “whacky” episode; quirk for quirk’s sake. Due to there being 19 or so
other regular episodes, we allow this one-off display of craziness. However,
when there’s only three episodes a series of Sherlock, we’re led to expect high
quality from ALL the episodes.
Happily, we got this in series 2, where the
three episodes - one introducing Irene Adler, one, a fantastic modern spin on
the Hound of the Baskervilles, and the intense final episode with the showdown
with Moriarty, both held our attention throughout. In series 3, the second
episode’s main plot device was Dr Watson’s wedding, and, although there were
flashes of brilliance, the majority of it was just ponderous.
Recently, I’ve been reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s original “The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”. Bearing in mind that this was long before the
era of iPhones, laptops, walkie talkies and the like, it really is enthralling
to delve into the mind of such an old-school detective. Hints of Sherlock’s
deductive prowess were shown in the first two episodes of series 3 of the TV
show (for example, when he immediately susses that a lady’s internet boyfriend
has gone missing, that it is the stepfather who was pretending to be him all
along, that is based on the short story “A Case of Identity”), but, lamentably,
series 3 seems more intent on carving him out better as a person than a sleuth.
As such, he’s a more rounded human, but a less interesting character.
Redemption for series 3 came in the season finale, which was back at its
finest, and like what we’d been used to in seasons 1 and 2, could work as a
stand-alone watch. The storyline centred around a newspaper mogul, Charles
Augustus Magnussen, played by the terrifically creepy Lars Mikkelsen,
channelling Rupert Murdoch in his performance. We wondered if Sherlock had
completed the full transformation into #human when he started dating Janine, a
woman he’d met at John & Mary’s wedding in the previous episode.
Graciously, it was just the Sherlock we all know and love, the cold, calculated
man who tramples over people’s feelings; in this case it was because Janine was
Magnussen mogul’s secretary.
There were shocks
aplenty in the final episode, although seeing Sherlock in a crack den, for anyone
who’s familiar with the book and his penchant for opium in them, was not one of
them. The episode was unashamedly emotional, with the peak of the series’
writing coming when John tells Mary “The problems of your past are your
business. The problems of your future are my privilege,” which is a
Renee-Zellweger-in-Jerry-Maguire moment, if there ever was one.
Whilst the
writing this series was far from its best, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin
Freeman continued to be wonderful, and Freeman’s delivery of said line drew
tears from this viewer. And, of course, the closing shot took us all aback.
Gatiss and Moffat were reminding us that, for all the frivolity and
second-rateness of episodes 1 and 2, Sherlock most certainly hasn’t lost its
ability to entertain and gobsmack in equal measure.
7/10
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