Sherlock
I watched Sherlock this evening. It was very good, maybe excellent. Fast paced, funny, clever, dramatic, everything a good drama should be. It has some clever modern touches, such as the floating text messages (pioneered by Hollyoaks), and the use of computers and mobiles to drive the plot along.
I’ve got one or two reservations though. As a detective drama, it may feel completely different to ‘Colombo’, ‘Murder She Wrote’, or indeed ‘Poirot’, but the structure is exactly the same; a murder or crime is committed, and the protagonist uses their cunning skill to reveal the killer/criminal. However, in those shows we are usually given the clues at the same time as the detective.
This allows us to play along at home, often leading to the old “I knew it was him!” routine that comes with the payoff. This doesn’t happen with Sherlock, and in the opening episode this happened for two reasons. Firstly, Holmes’ method of detection is through incredibly close observation of people, either dead or alive. We are denied this, and can only experience it through one of Holmes’ expository rants: we see it as he does, with the floating text, but we can’t really make sense of it until Holmes’ tells us why we can make sense of it. This pushes you further from the conclusion, and into the hands of the storytellers.
It will be interesting to see for how long they can avoid the deus ex machina of something like “But Watson, did you not notice the amount of earwax in the corpse’s ears? He could not possibly have heard the intruder!”, somewhere late in an episode to pull themselves out of a hole (like the sonic screwdriver in Dr Who, Sherlock’s closest current TV cousin).
Secondly, the show is ripe for parody, and already (after one episode) feels formulaic. It would be sad to see the programme, week after week, set up as:
- - A crime
- - Holmes investigates the scene of the crime
- - Expository rant
- - Red herring action sequence
- - Real criminal is revealed, “I knew it all along” says Holmes
- - Dramatic payoff
- - Setup for next week
It’ll prove interesting to see how they keep the ideas fresh and original. This maybe explains the short 3 show season it has, maybe they couldn’t push the limits far enough to warrant 6 episodes, or maybe Holmes goes south on a waterfall at the end of episode 3. I suppose having a structure set in cast iron didn’t stop the aforementioned Colombo having several TV series and umpteen films.
But - it’s a damn sight better than almost everything on telly at the moment, something that feels and looks British, rather than watered down versions of US cop shows trying to be the Wire. I like it, and I hope it goes far.
