During the 2021 holiday season, I rewatched all seasons of the BBC’s Sherlock with a friend of mine who is also very familiar with the Holmesian world. As a result, while watching the episodes, we engaged in discussion and analysis of the series in context and hindsight perspective that could not have existed when the show’s zeitgeist was at its height. Here are a few personal observations:
- The acting remains superior. More than anything else (including the writing, in my opinion), Sherlock‘s acting is its strongest point. It’s a heightened and stylized series, more and more so as it goes along and circles back on itself in increasingly meta ways. Nevertheless, even as episodes arguably grow less and less plausible or anchored in reality, the performances continue to be emotionally engaging and personally magnetic. I have never been able to view the portrayals separately, and I still can’t. I don’t want to argue that Benedict is the best Holmes and Martin the best Watson; I want to argue that, in partnership, they are the best paired version of the two characters. They don’t function alone, either inside or outside the story text. They are both intrinsic to Sherlock, and, in my view, they should be, because their necessity to one another finally mirrors the interdependency of the two in the stories the way few, perhaps no, adaptations previously have managed to do.
- The direction is very, very good. I will not give this a universal rave, because as the directors shifted throughout the series, there was some variation in quality. Paul McGuigan’s directing in the early series, in particular, has an elegance that set the tone for the production, felt unique, and still feels fresh years later
- The writing is uneven. At the time that Sherlock was airing, I was very inclined to give it a lot of passes. It was extremely above average for the television of the early 2010s, and it went places no Holmes adaptation had gone before. I still believe it’s a very above average series, but in the era of prestige television, I’m less inclined to have that early feeling of “nothing could be better than this.” Sherlock helped to bring Holmes, and the wider world of mystery, back squarely into cultural consciousness. It deserves credit for this trailblazing and for how deftly, in the case of many episodes, it did this. However, admittedly, it doesn’t shine quite as bright against the backdrop of a world where myriad other prestige series and even other prestige Holmes adaptations reside. Watching it now, I enjoy brilliant episodes, but I am more able to sense when some kind of invisible line is crossed, a line that kept the series from collapsing in on itself, which, I would say, it eventually did. Still, even in arguable death, the ending is a mad, beautiful wreck, brought to life by its cast so that even when the writing cannot hold, the characters do.
- Sherlock is still worth watching.When I embarked on this rewatch, I hadn’t watched the series since I had reviewed the final season for the Baker Street Babes as it was airing and very soon after wrote and edited pieces about its female characters for the Femme Friday essay series and book (available here). Part of my curiosity in the rewatch was a basic question of, “Does it hold up?” and, “If so, how much?” My answer is, yes, it does, and the majority holds up surprisingly well. My friend and I watched both the unaired pilot episode and the aired series, and what struck me immediately was how fresh and unusual both of these still felt. I believe the aired version and the style it set for the show was the superior choice, but I would have enjoyed seeing the show that would have followed the original, unaired version. It, too, was that good. Particularly in the first two series, the writing is sharp, incisive, and still comes across as extremely non-indulgent. We don’t need to be told to like Sherlock Holmes, the way some adaptations feel the need to lampshade his more undesirable qualities. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss trusted their audience enough to let us see a three dimensional Holmes, and just as we enjoy Doyle’s version with all of his faults, we are drawn into this incarnation. Watson is unsentimentalized, imperfect, and intriguing. Moriarty, finally, is fleshed out and terrifying. The updates make sense, for the most part. Perhaps these strengths are why the end of the series is so frustrating in some ways. I was not among the fans who had very specific expectations for the end of the show. I was always along for the ride. However, watching the show all at once in a very brief couple of weeks highlighted exactly how frustrating it is when something so brilliant collapses into itself and creates a black hole out of a brilliant star. It’s certainly still worth watching, but beware the Fall.
_________________________________________________________________________________
How to purchase my novels of Sherlock Holmes:
(Book 1) The Detective and the Woman: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes is available from all good bookstores and e-bookstores worldwide including in the USA Amazon,Barnes and Noble and Classic Specialities – and in all electronic formats including Amazon Kindle , iTunes(iPad/iPhone) and Kobo.
(Book 2) The Detective, The Woman and The Winking Tree: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes is available from all good bookstores and e-bookstores worldwide including in the USA Amazon,Barnes and Noble and Classic Specialities – and in all electronic formats including Amazon Kindle , iTunes(iPad/iPhone) and Kobo.
(Book 3) The Detective The Woman and The Silent Hive is available from all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide from Book Depository. In ebook format it is in Amazon Kindle.
Girl Meets Sherlock: A Holmesian Blog 