I thought it was pretty great! I really liked all the little touches of bringing it up to date like the modern version of the three pipe problem in an age where smoking is less welcome. I thought the whole thing worked very well.
I swear it’s not just because of Steven Moffat being involved in the writing but I did think their Holmes kept reminding me a lot of David Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor. They don’t look anything like each other but they both have a similar mix of contradictions. Arrogant and playful but often emotionally distant, even cold. Plus vastly intelligent but sometimes missing the human dimension.
I’m really disappointed there’s only three episodes. That’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Seems too many for a pilot but not enough for a series. I wonder if they orignally planned to have it go out at Christmas or over some other high profile bank holiday weekend and have (wrongly IMO) decided it’s now not good enough for that?
Oh and I thought the co writer Mark Gatiss was fantastic as his character too. Wrongfooted me totally and I hope we see him again.
I too was wrong footed by that one - jumped right into the obvious trap.
Liked where they took it though, I suspect that Gatiss and Moffat where influanced by Alan Moore there.
I’ve seen a lot of hilarious posts on other sites where people have been making “Princess Bride” comments without realising that the influence was the other way around
It’s more 4 1/2 hours than “3 episodes”. I suppose the BBC want to see if it sells abroad before spending even more fortunes.
Very good in a Saturday evening, light entertainment kind of way. Liked the partnership. Didn’t think the bloke from The Office could do it but he was fine.
(Spoilers for both “Sherlock” and Alan Moore’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” follow)
Although Mina makes the same mistake the other way around, doesn’t she? Assumes the shadowy 'M’who controls British Intelligence is Mycroft, I mean. Man, I wish we’d have seen more of the Sherlock Holmes characters in that comic - the tiny glimpses we got of them were so awesome.
I liked it, in a good piece of Sunday night fluff, type of way.
It was a fun romp that ticked lots of boxes for Holmes fans.
I’m glad they went modern as the Jeremy Brett version so nailed Holmes and the Victorian world that any re-make trying to be totally faithful to the original texts would just fail IMO.
I really liked the modern setting, and the deductions. I also liked the killers method, how to make the victims poison themselves. I was wondering if Sherlock had never read The Princess Bride.
Also, there was clever dialogue. Although Sherlock himself wasn’t always as clever as he was presented as.
[slight hijack] You mean the original Morgernstern text, of course. Goldman merely abridged it.
I was pleasantly suprised by how much I enjoyed the program, I look forward to the next one! I felt both main characters were well cast and it’s been cleverly updated.
Was the show based on an actual Conan Doyle story? I’m not that familiar with the original stories. I was just wondering about that Sherlock didn’t suspect, that the cab driver had built up immunity.
He already does play Holmes. It’s just they called him House and made him a doctor instead of a detective. But watching the modern setting does reinforce the parallels. (And Watson’s limp didn’t help either).
In particular, I thought the “hunt in plain sight”, “victims disappear from the streets” conundrum had been solved when the cab turned up at Northumberland St. That Holmes hadn’t got it, and was genuinely surprised by the later reveal, was kind of a shock.
Also, I didn’t like that they started off with a serial killer plot. Some of the original Holmes’ best mysteries are trivial - disappearing fiancees, and the like. Or they start trivial only to twist into something more serious (that only Holmes would suspect). If it’s always going to be murder and other high-profile crimes, that’s slightly out of step with the original - where what interested Holmes was not the seriousness of the crime but the intellectual puzzle it gave him.
Yeah, that was the worst. Also bad was when he realized it was Watson who shot the guy, and then made the most obvious change of mind ever, instead of trying to conceal it. “Seems like he figured out who it was, and tries to hide it”, would be the very straightforward thought after that.