A post-mortem of BBC's Sherlock (may it never breathe again)

[JasonPratt]

Stumbled on this Youtube video quite randomly, and... well, I got on the BBC Sherlock train a little late, with two seasons already down and a third about to be released. So it helped in some regards that I didn't have to wait two years (or more) between full seasons for most of the show. Just had other shows I was getting through, didn't bother with this one, annnnnnd kind of thought that the showrunner behind (much of) modern Doctor Who, whose stories even in the modern seasons weren't always the most cogent (but which was kind of okay in a silly, jolly, nightmarish, whimsical fantasy), might not be the best fit for an update of the king of deductive murder mystery reasoning.

But I liked the production values, and I liked the first few stories, and I was okay with Moriarty being nominally behind a lot of crime on the show, even though it made no sense for a crime master to be behind the murderer of the first episode (or movie rather since these things are like Columbo mystery movies). But I figured maybe it would be revealed that the targets weren't random or something like that. Only subconsciously did I grimace in passing that the show was calling the twist of the original "Study in Scarlet" stupid for being a twist and not being obviously not a twist.

Then Moriarty was a super-weird disturbing psycho. ...annnnd that was entertaining, but I started to worry. Because psycho-crazy goofiness is the laziest trope for a writer to ass-pull from when explanations for behavior don't end up making sense.

....annnd then Season One's cliffhanger randomly defuses for no clear reason that ever makes sense. But I had already bought the DVDs so I chugged along gamely to see where things were going. Even though this was a really bad sign.

...annnnd then I started to notice that the actual mysteries had stopped being relevant to the episodes, except for when the best Holmes novel/story ever was given an awfully weak re-imagine.

...annnnd then the Reichenbach Fall episode cliffhung in a way that didn't look like there could ever be a satisfying solution. But Season Three was on its way, and after all there are only three 90-minute movies per season and the show is still entertaining between its insults.

....aannnnnd then the third Season opener spent insulting amounts of time directly insulting anyone who cared about the show and who seriously wanted to know how Sherlock had survived and so who had followed the premise of the show that evidence provided by the show would be relevant into solving a case, thus trying to solve Holmes' non-murder. Nope, ass-waved away. I felt sorry for the fans who had waited a year or more and cheerfully tried to figure out the mystery; I had waited maybe two weeks. And at this point I would have been done with the show, but I already had Season Three so why not see how much worse or better it could get. Somewhere in here was a boomerang.

...aaannnnnnd then it made Watson's wife a super-ninja black-ops something, and Holmes murders a guy to win as a cliffhanger but that isn't the real cliffhanger because Moriarity is apparently back, which might as well be true since Sherlock shouldn't have survived either but I sure knew better than to try to take seriously that the show would explain this.

A couple of years pass, with a 19th century movie in between that existed for literally no good reason, not even for fun's sake, but instead had to be thrown away as Sherlock simply self-hallucinating from pondering a case he had never been involved with that Moriarty had to be dead but that he definitely knew what Mor's plan was and what to do next. Okay.

Season 4 opens: and the first thing I notice is that Sherlock has no idea what the plan is, and hasn't been able to do anything next, nor is really going to. Maaaybeee the "plan" is to drive Sherlock crazy thinking there's a plan? That would be different but awfully weak. Then Mary gets killed for being too interesting and pulling plot-focus away from Sherlock, who is repeatedly shown now to be both too super-awesome for the writers to bother explaining, and also incompetent, and also just mundanely competent like any fifth grader could think to do.

And at that point I was finally done. Didn't finish Season 4, but noted with sadness from fan reactions that I was probably right not to keep wasting time on this property.

So when I saw the title of this video come up, with an hour and fifty minutes (actually 1:46 in practice) of "Sherlock is Garbage, and Here's Why", I gave it a shot for sake of some catharsis.

It is not a 9 hour 40 minute dissection of the plotting and execution problems of a 120 hour show. But the composition mistakes of Sherlock are quite similar to the composition mistakes of Lost, and I rather enjoyed this guy vulgarly taking the piss on ten TV films of blindly egotistic self-importance and blatant contempt for its own fanbase.

So I figured I'd share!  :D

[bbmike]

I loved the first episode. For me it went downhill from there. In fact, I never finished watching the series. I may try again someday.
For the record, the only Sherlock Holmes is still Jeremy Brett. In fact, just typing that makes me want to watch the whole Granada series again. 

[mirth]

For the record, the only Sherlock Holmes is still Jeremy Brett Basil Rathbone.

ftfy

[bbmike]

For the record, the only Sherlock Holmes is still Jeremy Brett Basil Rathbone.

ftfy

[Nefaro]

I loved the first episode. For me it went downhill from there. In fact, I never finished watching the series. I may try again someday.

Watched the first episode.  Was undecided as to where they may go with it.

Watched the second episode a couple months later.  Got an idea. 

Haven't continued watching.   :-\



I did enjoy watching the two recent Sherlock movies.  Quite a bit different, though.





My basic rule, regarding series, is to watch three episodes before making a final decision.  Mainly to avoid early mistakes that are fairly common, such as flaky direction (e.g. poor line delivery that should've been re-shot), and general awkwardness in setting up the theme or overarching plot.  Those awkward issues can often improve over a few episodes, as everyone gets into the groove.

But this one seemed to do those things just fine.  Instead, I got the impression that the writers were building up alright, but would be doing whatever nonsense they felt like tossing in at the end.  Had doubts more episodes would change.

[JasonPratt]

For the record, the only Sherlock Holmes is still Jeremy Brett Basil Rathbone.

ftfy

Rathbone and Brett both ruled. I'm almost scared for Universal to realize that they could put Holmes into their Dark Universe as a chief protagonist: their Rathbone Holmes films, brought up to date (relatively) in WW2, set the standard until Brett.

[bbmike]

I have all of the Rathbone movies and will watch them all one day, but they are really hard for me to watch. And that representation of Watson is beyond horrible.

[mirth]

I grew up watching the Rathbone movies, so there's a lot of nostalgic affection for them.

Jeremy Brett was, of course, outstanding in the role.

[bob48]

.....it was the butler wot did it............

[mirth]

In the library with a lead pipe.

[bob48]

...with Major Incident and Miss Givings.............

[besilarius]

Tim Curry was a great butler.
An easy move up from Dr. Frankenfurter.

[JasonPratt]

I have all of the Rathbone movies and will watch them all one day, but they are really hard for me to watch. And that representation of Watson is beyond horrible.

That's certainly true.