Sherlock

"Are these human eyeballs?!"
"Put those back!"
"They were in the microwave."
"Its an experiment."






There is only one man alive who can put this amount of sex appeal into a psychopath.

From the first moment Sherlock Holmes appears, whipping a dead body with a riding crop, he sucked me totally in. (I actually wonder if that would have been a better point to start the episode before flashing back across to Doctor Watson and "nothing ever happens to me") Sherlock is a character that shouldn't be sexy. He's an amoral bastard. But I, for one, couldn't care less.


Its one of the things I love about Steven Moffat’s writing. You fall utterly head over heals for his character before realising that essentially they are, to quote Sherlock himself, “ a highly functioning sociopath”. There was a moments during Jekyll when Jekyll walked into a hospital, sunglasses firmly on eyes, grinning madly. Slung over his shoulder was a garbage bag containing a man he had just beaten to within an inch of his life. I had to do a serious double take. There was something darkly alluring about this character. Especially in that moment. To do these kinds of things to an audience’s brain takes an enormous amount of skill.


Sherlock was…there aren’t even words to describe how amazing it was. I’m currently staying in a sharehouse in Sydney for a fortnight. I had every intention of keeping my television obsession to a visible minimum while I’m here. I probably shouldn’t have timed my arrival to coincide with Sunday night. When the “coming up next” ad for Sherlock came on the screen I froze, leaning forward. I said, in a slightly hysterical voice-
“I’ve been looking forward to this for like a year.”


This is true. From the first moment the news of ‘A Study in Pink’ appeared on stevenmoffat.net I was giddily excited. And it didn’t let me down in the slightest.


The editing gave us a glimpse into the amazing mind of Sherlock. And that should have been really hard to pull off. The car chase, where Sherlock and Watson ran through the streets after a taxi could have been horribly contrived. The street signs and maps which flashed up could have been corny. Somehow it wasn’t. Same goes for the onscreen text which revealed to us both the thoughts of the characters and the text messages which were vital to character and plot development. Usually a text would have to be revealed through dialogue or cringe inducing voiceover. Instead they melded seamlessly into the breakneck dialogue and action.


I hate to say it but I’ve never read the original stories. I did very nearly but the classic penguins edition today. It is, however, my first day of being away and I’ve vowed not to return home with 17 kilos of books this time. As a result I can’t comment on the expert translation of the story and characters into a modern setting. This was going somewhere…I can’t remember where.


Sherlock is on again tonight and also next Sunday. So I’ll probably come back and rant some more about how good it is then. In the meantime go and set your video recorder or magic awesome box. Get a pad of sticky notes and write “SHERLOCK 8:30” on them. Now stick to everything within reach. Becasue this is unmissable television.