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

I just webmailed you

Best thing on telly over the whole Christmas period. Absolutely loved it.

otm. wish they hadn't kept referring to her "camera phone" though.

Really enjoyed this, better than last year's and hilarious throughout. The beheading reveal was lame though.

Was the beheading reveal bit an actual memory or a Sherlock fantasy moment?

i even liked that. that kind of setup - we're in That Middle East, there are sinister looking arabic types with swords, possibly muezzin wailing - is a horrible televisual cliché and tends to be telegraphing the idea that dark, serious things are happening; for two seconds i thought they actually were going to go there (which would have been aaaaaaaawful) and then it turns out to be for the sake of a gag, so well done them

xpost i had that thought but if it's a fantasy he's not established as having any other reason to know she was/n't beheaded, so

also it sets up that sherlock definitely knows mycroft is enlisting john to lie to him. (that stuff in this episode that sort of shifts into the idea that sherlock's family/friends are in the position of dealing with a mentally ill person is really smart, i think. -- in terms of convincingly modernizing the given material of the original without rewriting it.)

also part of why i like this -- the scene where they're waiting in buckingham palace really brought this home -- is that cumberbatch and freeman are sort of playing peter cook and dudley moore, too

I enjoyed it, but found all the "look at me, I'm writing a blog!/ hey guys just Tweet me @sherlockholmes" stuff to be a bit overdone. I think Cumberbatch is a bit of a ham too. Freeman and Gatiss are both good, though.

I enjoyed it - but it's definitely made for the attention deficit disorder generation.

I loved this unreservedly.

i've seen the first 2 minutes of this, which was enough to remind me how little i care for the dude playing moriarty.

Oh yeah, I forgot about him! Which probably speaks to how slight and badly miscast he is.

oh noes it's scary Ant from Ant 'n Dec!

he might be a good actor in another situation but he was just so obviously at sea, and overcompensating by doing the whackadoo sub-joker loud-quiet madman schtick we've all seen 10 million times

i totally plant to watch, though

uh, plan

If it makes you feel any better he is hardly in the episode after those first two minutes.

yay!

I enjoyed it - but it's definitely made for the attention deficit disorder generation.

― Daisy Click Clack, Tuesday, 3 January 2012 13:01 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol old man, u old

I almost literally cannot wait until Sunday when the do Hound of the Baskervilles. I am wishing the days away.

I like Moriarty! I really like his protean capriciousness. Malice born of boredom, a similar boredom to Holmes. Thought this was unreservedly excellent. Oh, and quite clearly Speedy isn't a cab firm as i stupidly said upthread. I meant to wander up the street where they film it to have a look at whether it is definitely an irl cafe. But didn't. I think it is. How tremendously exciting.

The cafe in Google streetview looks real enough.

Try again: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=gower+street&hl=en&ll=51.526221,-0.136664&spn=0.009105,0.019119&num=100&hnear=Gower+St&gl=uk&t=h&z=16&vpsrc=0&layer=c&cbll=51.526288,-0.136743&panoid=PxvoCwy-erhpK_1yyUQCpA&cbp=12,254.82,,0,3.79

It does indeed. Although that link seemed to take me to the other side of Gower Street. (xpost) ah yes, there it is.

I didn't really mind the beheading bit, or the sort of equivalent scene in the second episode of season one, where SH is fighting with a rather out-of-time desert clad swordsman, although both jarred. But I find the slight touch of the penny dreadful or comic book quite appealing ultimately i think.

I missed this because I was away for the New Year. Does anyone know if the Beeb going to do a repeat on BBC 3 (or something) sometime this week or do I have to watch it on iPlayer?

BBC3, Saturday, 7pm.

I thought this was great. Surprised how much I like Martin Freeman in particular.

I think Cumberbatch is a bit of a ham too.

oh noes!

lol at the implication that Gatiss isn't, tho

A lot of next week's Hound of the Baskervilles was filmed in and around my friend's pub.

xp yeah, fair enough, difficult to play Holmes without being at least a little bit hammy I suppose. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjKXFBkNE10

:D aw, that's great

Brett's the man for doing the dissipated Holmes, but he is also surprisingly convincing (and funny) as the tough guy.

I wish Mrs Hudson was my landlady. It would be brilliant.

Lot of criticism of Moffat for turning Adler into a sexist cliche, which I have to say I agree with; she should be every bit as unemotional as Holmes and thus unlikely to fall for him and be found out that way. Also, she shouldn't need Moriarty as a 'boss' or Holmes as a saviour; she's meant to be ruthlessly self-sufficient. The dominatrix thing I thought was a little cheap but ultimately didn't mind as such.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/03/sherlock-sexist-steven-moffat
http://stavvers.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/irene-adler-how-to-butcher-a-brilliant-woman-character/

The Guardian piece was cringe inducingly awful, because anyone who thinks that Who is more sexist now than under RTD is more than a little deluded.

I mean, there are parts of the Irene Adler crit I can agree with but when an article is started on such a boldly false assertion I can't take it seriously.

I hated the last minute or two and wished they hadn't been included because they were dumb and pointless but reading into it that Moffatt likes his formerly strong women on their knees begging to be rescued by the big man hero is equally dumb.

Think Moffatt's Sherlock is clearly meant to be hot for Adler without ever admitting it - there's no other reason to go to Pakistan to rescue your adversary (especially when it is a really dumb thing to do). It's not just about male reason beating feminine emotion yet again.

the original character is a cipher and making pronouncements about how she 'should' be or that conan doyle's gender politics are superior to moffat's is all a bit facepalm, tbh. - & to read the episode as demonstrating sherlock's superiority is to ignore that, you know, he's presented as being basically constitutionally and neurologically incapable of enjoying life, & she isn't

I think Moffatt has a tendency to write himself into corners that he then can't quite convincingly write himself out of and teaming Adler and Moriarty up was his handy way of getting them out of the swimming pool alive *and* introducing Irene.

I need to watch that plane scene again maybe but was it really saying that Adler was acting completely under Moriarty's orders and without any agency or ingenuity of her own? I don't buy that.

*SPOILER* The lot of us who watched it tried to parse out Why the information was so valuable to Moriarty, and Why it was only valuable once it had been deciphered, but we couldn't figure it out.

WHY it's valuable. Moriarty keeps on being defined in terms of being capriciously disruptive and destructive. his fight against boredom showing itself that way rather than Holmes'. Anti-establishment - see his raspberry at St Stephen's tower. Holmes - Buck House - is ultimately establishment.

Also complete absence of sentiment, in contrast to both Holmes and IA. Mycroft already pointed out despite SH's asseverations to the opposite his very choice of career is sentimental romantic.

WHY it needed to be deciphered. Muddier definitely. Depends on a series of questions - did Moriarty request she get the information? (phone call in pool suggests yes - this means he wasn't just working out how to exploit info already on her phone like she suggests at the end). Was Moriarty aware of a long-term spying operation but not sure of the details? Probably. Hence can only be destroy long-term spying op by knowing what knowledge they have. Like Tinker Tailor in reverse. He only needed to know it was a plane. Hence his text.

Also, can I just sat how much I love the direction/scene transitions in this show, especially in this most recent ep

Same director does next week, too; then the last one's by the guy that did Pandorica Opens / Big Bang / Christmas Carol / Astronaut / Moon on Who.

this was sooo good

still don't think i actually understand the scheme adler had goin

OH. That suddenly makes sense, Gamaliel.
I think I assumed that Moriarty was in league with the potential terrorists. If he's not, and just looking for "hot info", it comes together.
It doesn't explain why Adler would be beheaded as a result, if anything, she would be respected + honoured by the jihadists, granted wishes, etc. Or not. I don't know.
It was well directed, I liked it, but I like it best when detective plots fit together like Tetris games

- adler has snapshot of an email from MOD guy, but she doesn't know what it means, other than that this guy is boasting that it's important
- she calls moriarty to tell him that she has this potentially valuable information ("stayin alive"; did she hack moriarty's ringtone too at some point?)
- this is why moriarty spares holmes, because the plan is to use holmes as the code-breaker
- but but BUT - how do they know this info is worth anything at all? they don't know what it means! what could have made moriarty react so violently? how could he be so decided that he wants this info?
- putting that aside, adler now phones up buckingham palace to tell them she has incriminating photos of the princess. presumably she does this in order to get holmes involved and trick him into breaking the code.
- holmes gets involved. so now why does she make it so hard for him to even see the code, much less crack it? she tranqs him just to get her phone back.
- why are CIA dudes there? how do they know she's taken a snapshot of this MOD guy's email? adler told the palace about photos, she didn't tell anyone else about anything else.
- adler stands to gain $$ from giving moriarty the info, that much we know, cause he says he'll pay her for it
- isn't it worth a shot getting, i don't know, ANYBODY but sherlock holmes to have a try cracking the code first? (even setting aside the question of how they know this is valuable info in the first place if they don't know what it is)
- what does moriarty stand to gain?

i feel like there's a thread or motivation i missed that will make this make sense

really loved gatiss as mycroft, and really, really loved the oblique, repressed angles of the dialogue in places:

"
- Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.

- Ugh, this is LOW tar!"

- Well, you barely knew her.

* Holmes turns to leave *

- Merry Christmas, Mycroft.

- And a happy New Year.
"

or

"
- So she's alive then. How are we feeling about that?

- Happy New Year, John.

- Will you be seeing her again?

* Holmes plays 'Auld Lang Syne' *
"

i really love this show! even though i still don't quite understand what happened the last episode either.

did her boomerang thoery ever get a response or another mention?

i feel like there's a thread or motivation i missed that will make this make sense

everyone's trolling everyone

Jumped the shark this week?