Just finished watching the climax to the second season of Sherlock.
I don't know if the first season has made it across to the states yet, but Sherlock is the updating of several of (unsurprisingly) Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories to a modern day setting.
I forget how often I've ranted here about my general hatred of 'modernisation' adaptations. I generally feel that you lose a lot when you take things between mediums let alone when you stuff stories into new time periods.
Sherlock is a pleasant break from that, possibly because the actors in it are all excellent. Sherlock and Mycroft both stand out for me, with Moriarty a very close third.
The stories aren't direct adaptations, which helps a lot. The set pieces remain the same but the actual mysteries tend to be twisted a little, which keeps it interesting. Each episode is 90 minutes long, so although there's only three episodes in each season, it is the equivalent of a movie trilogy.
It is the only series I've bothered following since Black Mirror and Doctor Who stopped, and now it is over again... there's nothing worth watching on the TV. If you find yourself in a similar position and haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend getting hold of the seasons (be sure to start with season 1 as it informs season 2).
It also involves a fantastically savage beating given to a Jack Bauer style CIA agent for his interrogation methods. Beautiful to watch. :)
I've seen the first two episodes of season one last year. I thought the pilot was excellent but the Chinese ninja episode was silly. However I loved the acting and storytelling method used in both. I've been meaning to watch the next episode, I'll watch them and get back here with a proper comment.
Is that the one written by Steven Mottat? If so, I found series 1 hard to get into. It was a while ago that I watched it, but I recall not being able to really identify with anyone, which is odd because I especially enjoy all of Moffat's Doctor Who episodes.
Come to think of it, the new Sherlock is a lot like the Doctor, IMO... just a lot more bitter.
I've heard good things about the series, but never managed to actually catch it while it was on TV.
I guess I'll have to buy the DVDs at some point... What you say about there being nothing to watch on TV is totally true, however, the BBC back-catalogue of DVDs is surprisingly affordble, and contains more than a few hidden gems and old classics (House of Cards, TTSS, Smiley's People, Edge of Darkness, Spirals, etc). And that's without even looking at their documentaries.
Quote from: Iron Sulfide on January 15, 2012, 11:10:37 PM
Is that the one written by Steven Mottat? If so, I found series 1 hard to get into. It was a while ago that I watched it, but I recall not being able to really identify with anyone, which is odd because I especially enjoy all of Moffat's Doctor Who episodes.
Come to think of it, the new Sherlock is a lot like the Doctor, IMO... just a lot more bitter.
Yeah, that's the one. I hadn't made the connection between Sherlock and the Doctor before, but there are a lot of similarities. Sherlock is a
lot more callous though.
Quote from: Faust on January 15, 2012, 11:09:43 PM
I've seen the first two episodes of season one last year. I thought the pilot was excellent but the Chinese ninja episode was silly. However I loved the acting and storytelling method used in both. I've been meaning to watch the next episode, I'll watch them and get back here with a proper comment.
The chinese ninja episode was definitely the silliest IMO. Sometimes the deductions that he makes are a little hard to swallow, too... but I think that's unavoidable.
Quote from: Cain on January 16, 2012, 06:57:48 AM
I've heard good things about the series, but never managed to actually catch it while it was on TV.
I guess I'll have to buy the DVDs at some point... What you say about there being nothing to watch on TV is totally true, however, the BBC back-catalogue of DVDs is surprisingly affordble, and contains more than a few hidden gems and old classics (House of Cards, TTSS, Smiley's People, Edge of Darkness, Spirals, etc). And that's without even looking at their documentaries.
I've got everything on your list except Spirals (which I'm definitely going to have to grab now). They also did a TV adaptation of A Perfect Spy which I've had on DVD for a while but haven't actually gotten around to watching yet.
IIRC, a few years ago Charlie Brooker predicted that reality TV phone-ins would dominate the schedule because they are comparatively cheap and make back money quicker than having to release DVD series. Looking at the sheer number of stupid dancing competitions and talent contests, that's hard to argue with.
I believe the BBC also sell the Danish series "The Killing" of which Season 2 has just come out now.
Spirals is set in Paris, it's kind of like The Wire in that it follows the crime from several different points of view, its heroes are not very heroic, most of its villains are small-timers and everyone is bound up in these close-knit relationships with each other: the police, the prosecutor, the judges, the politics of the city and the criminals.
And once you find yourself with Spirals and The Killing in your purchase history, you'll find yourself being recommended Henning Mankell's Inspector Wallander series, which is meant to be excellent Swedish neo-noir. I have not watched any yet, but I intend to.
I just finished watching it yesterday, I really like the series, but I didn't like the final episode that much (especially the ending), maybe because there was too much focus on trying to humanise Sherlock, or the focus on Moriarty.
Anyway, if you liked Sherlock, you should watch Jekyll (if you haven't already seen it), which was Moffat's 2007 re-imagining of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, I really liked that series.
Also, thanks for those suggestions, Cain, they sound pretty cool.
I didn't know he did a Jekyll and Hyde remake. I'll definitely have to check that out.
I liked Moriarty but he did have shades of Moffat's The Master about him. Though that may only be occurring to me now that I can see bits of The Doctor in his Sherlock.
The last episode was interesting, but I did feel it dragged a bit. I was also pissed about the very end of the ending.
Quote from: Demolition_Squid on January 20, 2012, 09:56:34 AM
I didn't know he did a Jekyll and Hyde remake. I'll definitely have to check that out.
I liked Moriarty but he did have shades of Moffat's The Master about him. Though that may only be occurring to me now that I can see bits of The Doctor in his Sherlock.
The last episode was interesting, but I did feel it dragged a bit. I was also pissed about the very end of the ending.
Forgive me for correcting you but that master was R. T. Davis incarnation, Moffat hasn't touched him yet.
I watched 1x03 last night, it was excellent. I really liked the fast pacing of each mystery and I was genuinely surprised with the Moriarty reveal. I'm glad I waited to watch season 1 and 2 together because the cliffhanger is a killer, I want to go home now to watch the next episode.
Quote from: Faust on January 20, 2012, 10:08:30 AM
Quote from: Demolition_Squid on January 20, 2012, 09:56:34 AM
I didn't know he did a Jekyll and Hyde remake. I'll definitely have to check that out.
I liked Moriarty but he did have shades of Moffat's The Master about him. Though that may only be occurring to me now that I can see bits of The Doctor in his Sherlock.
The last episode was interesting, but I did feel it dragged a bit. I was also pissed about the very end of the ending.
Forgive me for correcting you but that master was R. T. Davis incarnation, Moffat hasn't touched him yet.
I watched 1x03 last night, it was excellent. I really liked the fast pacing of each mystery and I was genuinely surprised with the Moriarty reveal. I'm glad I waited to watch season 1 and 2 together because the cliffhanger is a killer, I want to go home now to watch the next episode.
Hah, so it is entirely in my head. :lol:
The ending of season 1 is fantastic and the 1st episode of season 2 is probably the strongest IMO.
Quote from: Demolition_Squid on January 20, 2012, 11:36:56 AM
The ending of season 1 is fantastic and the 1st episode of season 2 is probably the strongest IMO.
I've just finished this episode, everything I first liked about his doctor who is stronger in this then it has been in series six of DW.
His Irene Adler is an excellent strong, intelligent and sexy Mata Hari style femme fatale, admittedly with hints of River song and Amy but they do say that male writers can only ever truly write one woman. There are definitely parallels between the doctor and sherlock in this episode as smart virginal dufus types.
The overall episode mystery of cracking her phone password was fairly obvious but I didn't get it until it was pointed out.
I'll watch episode 2x02 tomorrow.
Finished watching the first season today. Thank you guys for the tip, I recommended the series to a bunch of other people, it's really good.
Also indeed glad I don't have to wait too long for the cliffhanger to resolve (just when I get time to watch 2x01).
I think Sherlock would make a pretty awesome Doctor as well. He's got the right "alien" face for it :) Would be cool if the series ended in a really strange and weird way and then in a later Dr Who season it would turn out it was the Doctor all along, caught in some timey-wimey memory loss episode :) Won't happen of course, but it would be cool :) [any other kind of cross-over would go bad IMO, the screen aint big enough for the both of em]
The hound episode was goddawful, not much better then the Chinese ninja episode. I have yet to watch the final episode. If it is good there is a definite pattern of two good episodes with a shit one sandwiched in the middle of the season.
I really enjoyed the Hounds episode. I saw the twist coming, but it was still pretty fun. I rewatched the third episode with my mum last night and it really drags the second time through.
Seasons One and Two arrived in the post today.
Probably wont get to watch them until tomorrow, though.
OK, started it.
Benedict Cumberbatch would not have been my first choice to play Sherlock. Then again, neither would Robert Downey Jr, or Hugh Laurie. Out of all three of them, I think Laurie pulls it off the best and most convincingly. Cumberbatch is... adequate, but I think there were better and more suited actors out there.
Watson is much more well cast. Maybe not perfectly, but he is believable enough in his role.
One thing I can quickly see being annoying is that Sherlock makes his deductive inferences on slim and shallow data sets which, while impressive enough to the average viewer, strikes me as not so much "science" and "intelligence" as quick-witted judgementalism. Also Holmes has to be mentally ill, of course, a "high-functioning sociopath" was the phrase used in the first episode, I believe. He couldn't simply be a very intelligent person who easily gets bored and does not suffer fools gladly, oh no.
I am, admittedly, only two episodes in (lol, shallow data set), and those above are my major quibbles with the show as a whole, which is less than with many programs.
I am forced to agree that the second episode of season one is rather silly though. "The Chinese government wont let just anybody out... so they have to pose as a circus act!" WTF? This isn't the Cultural Revolution any more, if you've got a lucrative smuggling gig going on, you can bribe a Chinese official for pretty much any identity you want, and leave the country quite freely. Hell, the Snakeheads are considered heroes in parts of China for human smuggling schemes. The whole premise seems quite contrived.
It was poor, see what you think of the next one, and the first episode of series two (my favourite).
I watched the last episode on sunday, not an awful lot of deductive reasoning, but a whole lot of personal drama, would have preferred more of the former for the confrontation with the antagonist.
Once everyone has watched it I'd like to discuss the very end of the last episode.
Will do. I did enjoy A Study in Pink, but of course, you always put out a strong pilot episode. Still, more like that and less like the follow-up would definitely be nice.
I'll probably start the next episode in a few minutes, as I'm not doing anything today.
OK, that was a bit more like it. Now started A Scandal In Belgravia.
Noticing something odd in the Hound of the Baskervilles. The symbol, on the Baskerville base. That's the double cross symbol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Cross_System). Don't know if its relevant, but thought I should mention it.
OK, watched them all.
The only explanation I have for the end of the final episode is that Watson was dosed with some of the drugs from the previous episode. Nothing else fits.
Quote from: Cain on January 26, 2012, 09:13:57 PM
OK, watched them all.
The only explanation I have for the end of the final episode is that Watson was dosed with some of the drugs from the previous episode. Nothing else fits.
Spoilers ho:
Clues
Sherlock Chose the location.
M talked about making him fall (sherlock arranged a situation he knew he would go off of the roof).
He knew that M wouldn't bother with a threat of random explosions or whatever, he wouldn't have cared, so he knew it would be personal targets. By choosing the location he could predict that someone would be watching for him taking the fall.
Sherlock talked to the woman in the morgue about needing help, was it his body that went off the roof?
The only thing that I can't figure out is how he made the body look like him. All I can think of is that they did plastic surgery on one of the corpses.
Else if:
Sherlock chose the hospital as the location knowing he was going to go off a roof, suffered a head trauma but had doctors on scene.
Else if:
That was M's body falling off the roof, was that a mask?
Possible clue: In the original books Sherlock and M went off a waterfall and their corpses were described, outraged fans insisted on Sherlock be written out of death.
Yes, disguising M as himself is the only other possibility. Around the same age, height and build...it's possible, though still a stretch. I think any explanation for that ending is going to be a stretch, really.
I also suspect that particular M was not the real M, though he was a fanatical follower, or impersonator of him. There is no coming back from that death, and Holmes without M is...well, it's not going to work. That death is going to have to be undone somehow. Given he is a consultant criminal who supposedly likes to work behind the scenes....well, M was a bit too flamboyant, a bit too desiring of the limelight. It didn't fit the previously established facts about him.
(SPOILERS)
Hm I like Faust's first explanation. I should watch part of it again, because even though M said "you chose this location" while on the roof, I didn't really catch that happening, I thought M texted Sherlock to come there. But then the time moved from night to day, and made me wonder if M would have just waited there all those hours, so I guess I really missed something there :)
About it being M's body thrown down disguised as Sherlock's, I considered that, especially with M's remark "you ARE me!!" but the odds of the disguise somehow coming off as the body hit the ground are against that.
To go back to Faust's first idea, it also fits with Molly (the woman at the morgue), because that's another thing I really wondered about, if it wasn't Sherlock's body, certainly she'd make sure to inspect it very carefully and would have undoubtedly found out. But if she was in on the plot, that would explain, as well as Lestrade not getting wind of it.
When I saw it I figured that some producer saw that the series was popular and decided to leave it open for another series, which Moffat didn't like, and as such, didn't bother providing any explanation as for Sherlock surviving the fall.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 27, 2012, 01:20:40 AM
(SPOILERS)
Hm I like Faust's first explanation. I should watch part of it again, because even though M said "you chose this location" while on the roof, I didn't really catch that happening, I thought M texted Sherlock to come there. But then the time moved from night to day, and made me wonder if M would have just waited there all those hours, so I guess I really missed something there :)
Yeah, I also didn't quite get that, I assumed it was M being cryptic/metaphorical, and meaning that all the choices that Sherlock made lead to this current situation.
The impression I got was that he picked the location with some plan about surviving the fall, which would obviously require some cooperation from the medical examiner to not get caught at.
He also seemed to make sure people saw it and would crowd around so that Watson couldn't reach the body until after someone else had checked for vitals first.
Plus they only checked his wrist for a pulse. That's one of the easiest places to give someone a deliberate false negative.
But I'm a big fan of the Pretender and crazy Xanatos gambits, so I pretty much immediately assumed some extremely complicated pre-planning was going on once I knew he was up to something involving the morgue lady.
(Note: I only watched the episode once a week and a half ago and at this point I remember my reactions to what happened better than the exact details of what the episode actually contained, so I might be off on some of the particulars)
(MOAR SPOILERS)
Quote from: Rumckle on January 27, 2012, 02:21:28 AM
When I saw it I figured that some producer saw that the series was popular and decided to leave it open for another series, which Moffat didn't like, and as such, didn't bother providing any explanation as for Sherlock surviving the fall.
No that part is a pretty straight wink to the books. As Faust mentioned, the writer Doyle killed off Sherlock in the original books (because he had enough of the character), fan outrage forced him to revive him.
Check the Wikipedia pages on Sherlock Holmes and the original stories, you'll find a great many correspondences from the original stories that they lifted to modern times:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_holmes
QuoteConan Doyle wrote the first set of stories over the course of a decade. Wanting to devote more time to his historical novels, he killed off Holmes in "The Final Problem," which appeared in print in 1893. After resisting public pressure for eight years, the author wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, which appeared in 1901, implicitly setting it before Holmes's "death" (some theorise that it actually took place after "The Return" but with Watson planting clues to an earlier date).[50][51] The public, while pleased with the story, was not satisfied with a posthumous Holmes, and so Conan Doyle revived Holmes two years later. Many have speculated on his motives for bringing Holmes back to life, notably writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who wrote an essay on the subject in the 1970s entitled "The Great Man Takes a Walk". The actual reasons are not known, other than the obvious: publishers offered to pay generously. For whatever reason, Conan Doyle continued to write Holmes stories for another 24 years.
Some writers have come up with other explanations for the hiatus. In Meyer's novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the hiatus is depicted as a secret sabbatical following Holmes's treatment for cocaine addiction at the hands of Sigmund Freud, and presents Holmes making the light-hearted suggestion that Watson write a fictitious account claiming he had been killed by Moriarty, saying of the public: "They'll never believe you in any case".[citation needed]
And from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Final_Problem (remember how Moriarty in the TV series went on about the "Final Problem"? Now you know why)
Quote"The Final Problem" was intended to be exactly what its name says. Conan Doyle meant to stop writing about his famous detective after this short story; he felt the Sherlock Holmes stories were distracting him from more serious literary efforts and that "killing" Holmes off was the only way of getting his career back on track. "I must save my mind for better things," he wrote to his mother at the time, "even if it means I must bury my pocketbook with him."
Conan Doyle sought to sweeten the pill by letting Holmes go in a blaze of glory, having rid the world of a criminal so powerful and dangerous that any further task would be trivial in comparison. (Holmes says as much in the story.) But this device failed in its purpose and pressure from fans eventually persuaded Doyle to bring Holmes back, writing The Hound of the Baskervilles (set before "The Final Problem") and returning him in "The Adventure of the Empty House". There were enough holes in eyewitness accounts to allow Conan Doyle to plausibly resurrect Holmes; only the few free surviving members of Moriarty's organisation and Holmes' brother Mycroft (who appears briefly in this story) know that Sherlock Holmes is still alive, having won the struggle at Reichenbach Falls and sent Moriarty to his death – though nearly meeting his own at the hands of Moriarty's henchmen.[1]
So that's another possibility for what might have happened in the TV series: Assuming that a lot of the plot details from the TV series closely follow the books, except in a modern setting, maybe his brother Mycroft helped him stage his own death?
I can't recall anything suggesting as much from the episodes, but Mycroft definitely loves his brother enough to want to keep him alive, despite their brotherly hate, and he certainly has the means to set up whatever complicated scheme this might require. On the other hand, it
is unlikely, because Sherlock would not likely admit to need his brother's help, not if there is any other way.
With no evidence shown so far, it would require a
lot of exposition in the next season, and in a not very Sherlock-y way, "all this stuff actually happened behind the scenes" is not really the style of a detective show, where the audience is supposed to come up with possible explanations.
I still think the "Molly helped him" theory is most plausible. Also because of the "Chekhov's Gun" factor (I'll spare you the link to TVTropes): That scene where he asked her for help because "he wasn't allright" and she said "What do you need?" and he said "You." (or something like that, I didn't check). There's been no follow-up to that, but they wouldn't have put it in if it weren't part of the story, especially not with her offering herself in a scene before that. And maybe because Jim Moriarty was Molly's boyfriend for a short while (he looks very different, younger, in that scene btw) she'd be the only one that might have seen evidence that M is not a hired actor.
Im going to guess that Moriarty is alive.
(http://i40.tinypic.com/rho9x2.png)
A quick google of "Sherlock Mountford" takes me to the wikipedia of John Gardner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gardner_%28British_writer%29) who in addition to writing the Suzie Mountford series of detective novels also wrote Return of Moriarty and Revenge of Moriarty.
Which are collectively about Moriarty surviving the final problem and seeking revenge on Sherlock.