the bbc sherlock series by the dr who 'bloke' and starring tim from the office

but, since it was all a dream, those women were not real women, but only dream images, so that no women were 'splained to in the making of that scene. it was just Our Hero having the Holmesian equivalent of a wet dream.

While having flashes of guilt about how he treats women. It's sort of doing the opposite of what Tuomas says.

Hmm.

Its a sort of wacky version of "Mr Selfridge"

I did recognise that "If you ever feel I'm getting too sure of myself" bit from the original book(s)..

ah is it time for my annual wish of orrible deaths to all involved again already? my my the time does fly

ahem ahem

i wish an orrible death on all involved

I was thinking of posting that this was rather slight, then I remembered we only watched half of it. Lots to look forward to clearly.

Has a new episode come out or are you still talking about last year's mess?

Pretty sure it was new, but I've not seen the other(s)

Every season gets even more overconvinced of its charm. And every episode still has enough interesting moments to make the dross seem all the more perplexing. Yesterday's bonus: one of the sloppiest-directed fight scenes I've ever seen (by the pool)

First of a series of 3 was on last night. It was partially based on the story with the Napoleon plaster busts but it substituted Margaret Thatcher and gave an explaining story about how Thatcher was seen as comparable to Napoleon.
I enjoyed it, it was more coherent than the one off story last year.

I do enjoy this programme and think it has lots of good quality despite its various flaws and its unusual self-regard, but I agree with those who think it has made a mistake in leaving Detection behind and going in for International Espionage Fist-Fights, Gun-Battles etc.

Good of Mark Gatiss to give himself so much screen time.

I agree with those who think it has made a mistake in leaving Detection behind and going in for International Espionage Fist-Fights, Gun-Battles etc.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Mycroft Problem. (Conan Doyle used him, what, in three of the stories total? He's an interesting add-on used very sparingly in a couple of highly notable cases -- only one of which was a full-on espionage case IIRC -- and by making him, institutional spying and The Government more and more of a central thing throughout, it all gets more boring, somehow.)

Will not be much of a surprise when they let the cat out of the bag that Sherlock faked the death of "Mary" aka "Rosalind" in order to fulfill his preposterously sentimental vow, thus putting Watson through the grief of once more losing a loved one 'for the team'. Also, "Mary" as a Jason Bourne-alike is not especially convincing. I like this version of Holmes better when he was more of an insufferable asshole.

yeah i dunno that i care all that much about all this espionage nonsense? sentimental sherlock and sad dad watson flirting with a girl on a bus and of course its never just a girl in a bus so who knows what all thats about

i was behind on last season & caught up yesterday
- i hate storylines like "all the worlds secrets are kept in x" and that vault being in the bad-guy's mind made it 10 times more stupid, so gatissy/moffaty to resolve in such a facepalm way
- abominable bride was ok, setting it in 19th c actually make all the affectedness of the show a bit more pleasant & less annoying for me...but the flashing forward & back was p silly imo
- AGRA flash drive, rmde nonsense that anyone would house all that info in one place x 4! (like the stupid magic James Bond hard drive with all the agents names in Skyfall)

But it's not a terrible way to kill an hour and a half on a Sunday night/Monday morning. I enjoy it despite all my petty annoyances & eyerolling

(like the stupid magic James Bond hard drive with all the agents names in Skyfall)

I laughed out loud on a plane when hacker genius Julia Stiles started downloading a folder labeled BLACK OPS in the latest Bourne movie.

Feeling the American 'Elementary' way more than this

What a mess. Gatiss has a big problem with structuring a 90 minute story. the last 3 episodes have all been bad. OTOH this means i am fine with them dropping the rupert murdoch murder cliffhanger.

the cases that flashed by weren't clever, didn't make sense, didn't involve any clues, and felt like a first draft to be filled in later. was there ever a reason given for why watson's house had been repainted?

gun & pool fights looked awful and added nothing. agra bond plot was a bore. part of the fault is "the sign of four", the weakest doyle sherlock novel. at least a study in scarlet was enjoyably bad!

i can't work out how ammo/amo was supposed to be a hint. there's a person who used the codename "love", and... it wasn't her?

i liked the 5-minute mystery with the cars.

Where have I seen the dressing like a chair trick before? It seemed familiar.

this thing?
http://www.businessinsider.com/man-attempts-to-illegally-enter-us-by-disguising-himself-as-a-car-seat-2016-7

it was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nHxBux1JAg

which i think is an advert based on something that the same guy did a few years earlier - taking an 'empty' car through a drive-thru, for the lolz.

I saw one in a museum in Berlin, about the ways people got through the iron curtain - they had the car with the fake seat, and a mannequin inside.

tbqh, that seemed like one of those "it's in the Conan Doyle original", like the question is not so much "how did he die" rather than "why would he do that?" (I know, I know, there weren't cars back in the 1890s and so on)

A bit like that old one about the hanging guy with only a pool of water underneath him..

Also..

I know we are in the future now and all that, but a tracking device inserted into a USB stick?

Shrines to M.Thatcher. Who does that? nobody, that's who.

right?

Oh, it wouldn't surprise me if some rabid Tory arseholes did.

Though they'd be voting UKIP these days.

I'd normally roll my eyes at nitpicking about credibility but everything about this was just egregiously terrible and insulting. The Thatcher shrine was the single most believable element.

I don't imagine that Mary will return - it would be pleasant from the point of view that I quite like the actress and he writes well for her on a scene-to-scene basis. It would also be quite surprising because the actress has recently separated from Martin Freeman.

But mostly there is noting in Moffatt's history of Heroic Men and the Women who Facilitate Them that suggests this would be a feint.

I didn't realise they'd split up. Would've been better to kill him and keep her then, really. Could still be Sherlock & Watson, just a more interesting Watson. Plus it'd be easier from a scheduling perspective.

He doesn't seem to have much coming up, but otherwise I approve of your plan.

was there ever a reason given for why watson's house had been repainted?

I'm not really a devotee of this show and was only half-watching as I walked in and out of the room doing other things but even if I was a rabid fanboy I don't think this question would ever occur to me.

presumably we find out in the extras on the dulux edition

I like how they compressed the actual mystery-solving into a dismissive handful of incoherent text message montages. It was a hearty fuck you to everyone who enjoys the idea of Sherlock Holmes actually solving mysteries instead of spending the entire episode on the tragic family life of John the Bus Stop Pickup Artist and his wife Mary, Ex-Superspy with her Signature... Dice and USB Thumb Drive. Just the dumbest possible bullshit they could come up with to hang a bunch of unearned pathos on. The same thing that makes recent Doctor Who unwatchable.

Just the dumbest possible bullshit they could come up with to hang a bunch of unearned pathos on.

The average viewer takes little or no pleasure in intellectual pursuits, but far prefers the luxurious sensation of wallowing in unearned pathos. Pleasing that average viewer is what makes for the biggest audience and greatest commercial success. /captainobvious

people love to repaint their homes, especially when they're having a kid

I'd normally roll my eyes at nitpicking about credibility but everything about this was just egregiously terrible and insulting. The Thatcher shrine was the single most believable element.

The Scottish accent of the woman on the bus was pretty unbelievable.

Was that a Scottish accent? I thought she had some kind of a speech impediment.

I thought the repainting was because Rosamund had thrown up all over the walls? They did compare her to the girl in Excorcist in that bedroom scene.

was there ever a reason given for why watson's house had been repainted?

I'm not really a devotee of this show and was only half-watching as I walked in and out of the room doing other things but even if I was a rabid fanboy I don't think this question would ever occur to me.

it's something sherlock notices in floating text that goes nowhere.

Wow, this was senseless. At least it was a Gatiss episode.

Was Molly sitting for John at the end when Sherlock visited (i.e. was that John's place and not Molly's place)?

I think so, she is the kid's godmother after all.

wow, how bad this latest episode was !
absolutely rubbish.
As noted upthread, the fighting was stupid. The tracking over north Africa was useless (reminded me of indiana jones with the travels over maps). the mary story/traitor meh. The final shooting/sacrifice thing...
I had noticed how badly written the show was but that's a low... or maybe the long time between each episode makes me forget how bad most of them are !
At this point, the only things I still enjoy in the show are the tiny comedy bits.

or maybe I'm just too old for this and they target kids/teenagers. which is quite likely !

Yeah, I turned to my missus and said "They could just burn large piles of cash in front of the screen instead".

https://twitter.com/caslxcked/status/815701993545080832

I think Gatiss/Moffat seem to have have forgot that the main draw for the show (and most Sherlock Holmes stories in general) is clever mysteries and watching how Sherlock solves them, not the meta wankery of the previous episode or the pointless soap opera tear-jerking of this one. They're just not very good writing at writing genuine human drama, and they definitely shouldn't do it in a show that doesn't need it.

Mary's dying scene, where she had the time to say all those corny things and then died right after finishing her last sentence was already cringeworthy enough, but then they had to more to it in the form of the video will, and create more pointless melodrama by having John blame Sherlock for her death. I actually liked the drama in Sherlock's fake death and return, but that was more low-key, and before that they'd managed to make the Sherlock/John relationship tangible in a way the Mary/John relationship never was.

Also, this must be third time since season 2 that Sherlock learns the lesson that he shouldn't be so arrogant and cocksure? It's getting a bit tired, please come up with some new morals.

Also..

I know we are in the future now and all that, but a tracking device inserted into a USB stick?

I don't mind moments of unreality in Sherlock Holmes plots, whether they be snakes that climb ropes or tight belts that prevent internal hemorrhage. My test for acceptability is whether I can tell it's invented while I'm reading or watching it. I didn't know trackers weren't quite that small yet, so it was acceptable to me. Maybe it fails for others.

Perhaps the creators were thinking of RFID tags, but those require local trackers.

Thanks Tuomas.

I've been trying to rank the Gatiss episodes. This one is as bad as "The Hound of the Baskervilles" as far as narrative coherence, but not offensive in the way that "The Blind Banker" is. I can't remember what kind of naff "The Empty Hearse" is.

I think Gatiss/Moffat seem to have have forgot that the main draw for the show (and most Sherlock Holmes stories in general) is clever mysteries and watching how Sherlock solves them, not the meta wankery of the previous episode or the pointless soap opera tear-jerking of this one.

alternatively, fans of meta-wankery and pointless soap opera tear-jerking are their target audience. plus, you know, dweebs who moan about shit on the internet even tho they keep watching it.