I have a confession. The chances are you won't like it.
I am not a super fan of Sherlock (BBC1). There. I've said it.
And I have tried hard to adore it. But I merely like it.
I can't get over the nagging feeling just because it is head and shoulders above everything else around it (and it arguably is), it doesn't make it any better just as what it has left behind, really, has not been made any worse.
My main truck is with the writers, Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss. The cult of Moffat possibly deserves a full blog by itself. However in this context, having both him and Gatiss working on Sherlock deflects from my suspension of belief. I find myself constantly thinking of Moffat and Gatiss scripting and plotting the episodes as they play out in front of my eyes. And then Gatiss is in it, and I think of him writing his own part. Most annoyingly, Moffat and Gatiss do seem to court and revel in this aspect of their show.
Viewers can Tweet Moffat to ask him about plots and twists and answers. Viewers look for clues in grammatically incorrect dialogue, paint patterns of a picture hung in the background and noises off camera. Fed on a diet of Derren Brown and Moffat's own Doctor Who, it appears that the modern watcher of a Moffat programme is already second guessing the next series before it is even made. And Moffat is only too happy to weave red herrings and subterfuge and place it in all in a Tweet right back.
Moffat tweeted on the announcement that a 3rd series was being made: "Gotcha!" sending the Twitterscope into overdrive about how Sherlock could have survived the final episode of the 2nd.
Fervent Tweeter: "Sherlock survives because, although alive when we see him fall from the roof, there is a garbage truck that blocks you seeing him hit the pavement in a single camera shot. I bet there were crash mats on the ground."
Yes, there definitely were. Otherwise the other option would be to actually kill a stuntman wearing a cool overcoat.
My theory? It pulls in 9.3 million viewers.
Here is my point:
Who is John Hawkesworth? No one knows. I've asked. No. One. Knows. And this is despite him having a name that is very memorable.
It was never hip in the kitchen at parties to say on trend things like: "Hawkesworth has managed to make cult mainstream and mainstream interesting again." and then have people barely known to each other nod in agreement.
The other thing that doesn't sit well with me, apart from the writers, is the writing.
I will move past the obvious comparisons with Moffat's other titular hero, Doctor Who... alright if I must, quickly: Sherlock is the Doctor, Watson is the Companion, Moriarty is the Master, Mrs. Hudson = TARDIS.
Sherlock is fast paced, humorous but at it's worst it is knowing. It is a romp. It seems half-designed to hit fan boy targets and the half to show generation Y just how cool Sherlock Holmes is. It is sexy geek. Though highly watchable, again I think ocassionally the writing is trying to be more clever and more about the writers wanting adoration than anything else.
A great thing about Sherlock is it has dealt the death knell to a perennial problem for TV shows. How to manage the fact that everyone is on their mobile phones these days. Sherlock deals with it like a duck to water, or a Holmes in the 22nd century to a computer controlled hover police vehicle.
With a simplicity that is close to revolutionary, they print the text of the phone on the screen next to the the character receiving or sending the message.
But it has been such a good idea for the makers of Sherlock that they have adapted to it all sorts. The ATM machine was one example. Couldn't just put a camera over Watson's shoulder for that one, no? Sherlock's actual thoughts was another. Making sense of how Sherlock Holme's mind works out a case was the job of Dr. Watson (the "Mind Palace" inspired line aside). Not now we can see the words forming, the map clearing and the problem solving literally has it happens.
But just as the text messaging is great the case the code breaking technology in the episodes has fallen into my pet hate trap. Passwords.
Invariably needing to hack into a military science base computer, Sherlock looks at the book the General was reading and deduces the password. He does the same by feeling the pulse of a femme fatale. Both passwords are people's names.
Now, I don't know about you, but in my job (which is pretty low level) my password is a random series of numbers and a punctuation mark put somewhere inbetween which changes every 4 months. The IT department at my work insist on it. And I just have a couple of spreadsheets on my PC.
Finally, the Sherlock Holmes character of this latest adaptation was something that I was going to witter on about for perhaps another 3 or 4 paragraphs. But I now have no need. In fact, nobody need ever discuss the Sherlock in this series agian. A comment on the Guardian TV review site has summed it up more perfectly than anyone ever could. In fact, it sums up the whole thing so neatly I probably didn't need to lay down this blog at all, except for quoting:
This Sherlock is just a vicious Detective Monk
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