Sherlock

Sherlock – Season two of this BBC series consists of three episodes, each elaborately staged and shot, based on Conan Doyle’s stories “Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” and “Reichenbach Falls”. In broad form, the shows are hyper-sophisticated versions of the forensic science franchise CSI done with a British accent. Sherlock’s ratiocinative skills are illustrated by cascades of computer-screen data that spill across the scene, lightning-fast monologues by the “consulting detective,” and huge close-ups of items of evidence flashing at us so quickly as to be almost subliminal in effect. I think the show would be better if it were less intricately wrought – at times, the overload of information, multi-lingual puns, and hyper-linked close-ups resembles late Godard; you can’t take in the information quickly enough. Furthermore, the rapid editing and sensory overload distracts a little from the performances which are uniformly brilliant. The shows are witty and the first season was playful, teasing the viewer with hundreds of references to Conan Doyle’s work, Victorian details ingeniously modernized for the 21st century – for instance, there is a running gag about everyone regarding Watson and Holmes as gay lovers. The second season is darker and more disturbing. Conan Doyle’s stories always suggest a bizarre, apparently supernatural, phenomenon that is “solved” is strictly scientific terms. Nonetheless, the fascination of the stories lies in the occult, mysterious, and enigmatic Holmes – Holmes represents a fantastic phenomenon that can’t be solved. Accordingly, Conan Doyle rationalizes the supernatural while always maintaining a core of uncanny mystery enveloping his great creation, the “consulting detective Sherlock Holmes.” The BBC series is stunning in that it preserves this dynamic: Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor playing Holmes, is startlingly strange, uncanny. (His foil, Professor Moriarty is equally bizarre – he speaks with a strange accent that you can’t quite place and his bland features sometimes contort with unexpected bestial hatred.) Holmes mannerisms are weird and he seems completely cold and inhuman. In fact, one of the themes in the show is that whenever Holmes momentarily seems to display some human emotion, we learn that he is, in fact, feigning sentiment for some icily rational reason. Holmes is legitimately unpleasant, even repellant, and Cumberbatch is careful to never break character – like most of the people in the program, you would not to have anything to do with this guy. This is a classic TV series, and, certainly, represents the best Holmes ever put on film.