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“That’s how you get your kicks, isn’t it? You risk your life to prove you’re clever.”
A modern take on Sherlock Holmes? The great detective living in a flat in present-day London with Watson? Solving crimes using texts and computers and things? And the two main characters calling each other by their first names?! It’ll never work.
Except Sherlock does work. Staggeringly well. Almost ridiculously well, in fact. Everything about this first episode, from the writing to the acting and characterisation, worked beautifully, and promised great things for future episodes (and future series, which are almost certainly going to be made.)
Anyone familiar with Steven Moffat’s work on shows like Doctor Who and Coupling won’t have been surprised at all by this opening episode. It combines all of the best elements of his writing: witty dialogue, strong characterisation and excellent plotting. From the moment Sherlock first comes onto the screen, his character is perfectly drawn: he notices that the lab technician has put on lipstick, but completely fails to spot that it’s for him. When he later sees that she’s taken it off, he bluntly tells her, “I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth’s too small now.”
Moffat and his co-creator have spoken about their reasons behind taking Holmes away from the streets and fog of Victorian London. Stripping away these trappings, it allowed them to really focus and foreground the central relationship: Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. It’s the friendship between the odd, genius detective and his medical friend that really makes the books work, and it’s written magnificently here.
And yet it would be nothing without good acting. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes is just the right balance of charisma, arrogance and genius, while Martin Freeman manages to ground the whole thing, giving a master class in subtle acting. The chemistry between the two just works: the scene at the end, where Holmes realises that Watson saved him, is wonderfully played, as is the sense of the adventure that Holmes takes Watson on. At the very end, I thoroughly believed Mycroft when he said that the two characters were “Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson."
Moffat has described Holmes’ powers of deduction as the best superpower ever, especially as he explains how he did it. Here, he treats the originals with love, but he clearly isn’t afraid to play fast and loose with them to make a better story. Sherlock uses modern technology liberally, but his deductive genius remains intact. It also plays with the legend that has built up around Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, such as the “three pipe problem” becoming a “three patch problem”. I particularly enjoyed the Moriarty/Mycroft twist, partly because of Gatiss’ marvellous turn as Sherlock’s genius older brother, but mostly because I was able to be very smug as I (for once) guessed it.
Ultimately, the first episode of Sherlock worked because the great, nerdy love that the creators have for the original stories combined with their great talents to make something that could be very special. Very special indeed.
Check back next week for my thoughts on the second episode, ‘The Blind Banker’.
I was prepared to be disappointed with this one, but it was actually very well conceived and executed, though Guy Ritchie's film is still the best contemporary update of Holmes and Watson, in my opinion, with House coming a close second.
The only bits which annoyed me were the intro credits and music, which gave the depressing vibe of Eastenders meets The Bill. Plus the background locales looked more like York than London.
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