Three is not enough!

[chani]

"The Great Game", Sherlock's last instalment, left me wanting more.

Also I sorta have the urge to listen to Holst's The Planets now; I have the cd somewhere but I haven't listened to it for ages...

I very much enjoyed the episode. Gatiss wrote a better episode than the previous one. Moffat and Gatiss should write all the episodes themselves!
Moffat is really the man when it comes to British television (like Whedon and Ron Moore for American series). I love the way his mind work.
The Moffat/Gatiss team is definitely a winner. I wonder who's Sherlock and who plays Watson in the couple ;- P

Speaking of our leading pair, the acting performances continue to be first class. By the way is it me or does Martin Freeman sometimes look like John Simm?

Watson being Holmes' blogger was simply perfect!!!!! And Gatiss dared a  " I'd be lost without my blogger!" The fact that his blog's title was "A Stufy in Pink" was the sherry on the top.

I enjoyed Holmes teaching a grammar lesson to the criminal in Belarus at the beginning of the episode or being focused on the riddles instead of showing any empathy for the terrified messengers who wore bomb-filled jackets (it's exactly like House, and it's the way Sherlock must be, he is a riddle solver first and foremost). It's all about the head (and he does have a head stored in his fridge!), yet there's some heart too when it comes to John Watson. And it's enough. And it's true to the books.

Here I can't hep quoting A Study in Scarlett:

"Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes -- it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects. To do him justice, I think that he would take it himself with the same readiness. He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge."

I loved the several puzzles our detective had to solve and how they both distracted Sherlock AND the audience. I should have known that the Jim guy was significant when Molly introduced him as her boyfriend and Sherlock said he was gay. It"s like the proverbial gun (or rather Chekhov's gun); if it's introduced at some point, early in the story, it will shoot soon or later.

And even Sherlock mentioned himself that he was hiding in plain sight! Same with the anti-Sherlock aka Moriarty! Ha!

I also enjoyed the last enigma about the fake Vermeer and the way Sherlock proved it was fake because, not only it was perfectly tied in with the star loving victim and the phone call he had received, but also it was an echo to a previous conversation between Holmes and Watson about Holmes being clueless about the solar system!

And again the show managed to update Conan Doyle's stories while remaining faithful to its spirit.

By the way, here's another quote from A Study in Scarlett:

"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it."

So the plot revolving around a fake painting and a supernova was perfect. And of course I loved it because one of Vermeer's famous paintings which is at le Louvre is....The Astronomer!

Echoes and mise en abîme are my little pleasures.

The Golem at the Planetarium scene was fantastic in every sense of the word. It reminded me of old horror movie like Nostferatu. The light coming on and off created the impression of old editing, and there was Holst's suite being played as if a mad DJ's were doing scratch stuff. A perfect blend of old and new.

The last ten minutes were terrific as well, with the script playing with us, twist after twist ––first letting us think that Watson might be Moriarty, then revealing the true Moriarty. I especially enjoyed Moriarty's false exit (fake painting, fake closure/ending) and his threatening return. Twist within twist, change of pace, a pause before the final rise and the cliffhanger or sustained note. It's musical and it's sophisticated and better than most things we can see on tv nowaydays.

I liked the fact that Moriarty was a "consulting criminal" and yet obviously insane. It's a good nemesis/match for our sociopath but technology-savvy Sherlock.

I wonder if the swimming pool was a wink at Reichenbach Falls...;-)
 

 

Comments

[jerusha]

I totally agree. Three episodes was definitely not enough, and I'll be keeping my eye open for it to come to the US so that I can make Tyson watch it, too. We both love Sherlock Holmes, and this was an amazing adaptation.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I'm sure we'll get others but when?

[rahirah]

I'm not terribly thrilled that Moriarty seems to be a poor man's version of Simm's Master (a character who grates on me immensely) but otherwise, an excellent episode.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

It's quite funny to see everyone compare this Sherlock to Dr Who, given that Sherlock Holmes is the archetype many fictional characters have been based on afterwards, including the Doctor!

Conan Doyle created a pattern with a detective solving puzzles and fighting crimes, with his sidekick Watson, and having an arch-nemesis. No matter the sci-fi sides, DW completely fits in, with the Doctor's companion(s) playing the sidekick; and The Master is definitely one of the last avatars of Professor Moriarty.

I'm sure that some youngsters who have never read Conan Doyle's stories and know Sherlock only through the last movie by Guy Ritchie, may think that this series have borrowed lots of stuff from "Doctor Who" or "House M.D". :- )

It's very Borgesian!

That said, it's true that the actor playing Moriarty sounded sometimes like John Simm's Master, and that Moffat and Gatiss were probably influenced by their previous work on DW.

[rahirah]

Heh. I read the entire Sherlock Holmes series back in high school, which was about thirty years ago now, so I'm reasonably certain I don't think Moffat was borrowing from Who in anything more substantial than making Moriarty a camp and nutty villain, as opposed to a calculating mastermind as inhumanly cold as Holmes himself. As I recall, Moriarty appeared in only two of the original stories, "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House," in which Conan Doyle killed Holmes off and brought him back. He didn't really have much of a personality at all, so I can't blame Moffat for giving him one - but I wish he'd given him a different one, as this one really annoys me.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Oh I didn't mean you were one of the clueless youngsters I imagined! Your comment just made me to ponder and muse about how references work in our minds hence my hint at Borges who used to say that "every writer creates his own precursors".

And yes Moriarty is mentioned several times but appears only in two stories, I think. He was mostly a plot device to get rid of Sherlock Holmes, but the readers didn't accept it.

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the swimming pool was a wink at Reichenbach Falls...;-)

I wondered the same thing!

I agree the characterisation of Sherlock is great - and in fact in the books he starts to 'warm' only after his association with Watson grows doesn't he.

I really, really, really didn't want it to be the last episode for now...!!!

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Now the BBC will endure the same public pressure Conan Doyle once experienced, to get Sherlock back!

At least they didn't say he was killed by Moriarty...;- )

If they want to be true to the book, Moriarty must fall in the swimming pool and die.

I think that the next story that was published after The Final Problem was The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I can't wait to see how they will adapt that one!

[lijability.livejournal.com]

It seems the BBC must reproduce Sherlock Holmes at least every other decade in some form - and the 2010's are no exception. Having now seen them on our PBS, I certainly hope for more of this updated Sherlock.

Like my new FRINGE avatar?

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Oh yes!!!