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Over Christmas break I watched the first series of Steven Moffat's Sherlock with my brother.
Consider me deeply unimpressed.
This show is all sizzle, no steak. There’s a lot of banter and some fancy camera work and a lot of running around wildly, none of which quite suffices to cover the fact that the plots are nonsensical rather than clever, and the characters hollow.
Any Sherlock Holmes adaptation lives and dies based on Holmes’ characterization, and Holmes and Watson’s friendship, and unfortunately Moffat’s choices for the former wreck the latter. Moffat characterizes Holmes (or Sherlock, as he’s called here - first name, as it’s the modern day) as a brilliant, sociopathic adrenaline junkie, so fascinated by the whirring of his own capacious brain as to have no space left to care about anyone else.
Including Doctor John Watson. Who is, nonetheless, inexplicably devoted to Sherlock. His devotion might make sense if they’d known each other for years, but they only meet in the first episode and Sherlock treats him like a handy appliance, not a human being, so it beggars belief that John would put up with it.
Unless, of course, John is in love with Sherlock. (His cheekbones, let's face it, are pretty amazing.) Someone in the writing room has clearly cottoned on to the existence of slash fans, and decided to harness their rabid enthusiasm by winking at the John/Sherlock possibilities two or three times per episode. I resent this transparent attempt at manipulation; there’s no intention of actually going there.
Which, resentment aside, is probably just as well. Sherlock is as afore-mentioned a sociopath - I have no idea why Moffat thought sociopathy would be a winning character trait - and John should run, not walk, for the exit.
But I might have forgiven all this, or cheerfully ignored it at least, were Sherlock half - a quarter! - as brilliant as he thinks he is. The nadir occurs in the first episode, when he chases down a taxicab because he thinks there’s a serial killer riding in it, but - it never occurs to him that the killer might be the cab driver. Never mind he’s just described the killer as, oh, someone exactly like a cab driver!
WORST DETECTIVE EVER.
Consider me deeply unimpressed.
This show is all sizzle, no steak. There’s a lot of banter and some fancy camera work and a lot of running around wildly, none of which quite suffices to cover the fact that the plots are nonsensical rather than clever, and the characters hollow.
Any Sherlock Holmes adaptation lives and dies based on Holmes’ characterization, and Holmes and Watson’s friendship, and unfortunately Moffat’s choices for the former wreck the latter. Moffat characterizes Holmes (or Sherlock, as he’s called here - first name, as it’s the modern day) as a brilliant, sociopathic adrenaline junkie, so fascinated by the whirring of his own capacious brain as to have no space left to care about anyone else.
Including Doctor John Watson. Who is, nonetheless, inexplicably devoted to Sherlock. His devotion might make sense if they’d known each other for years, but they only meet in the first episode and Sherlock treats him like a handy appliance, not a human being, so it beggars belief that John would put up with it.
Unless, of course, John is in love with Sherlock. (His cheekbones, let's face it, are pretty amazing.) Someone in the writing room has clearly cottoned on to the existence of slash fans, and decided to harness their rabid enthusiasm by winking at the John/Sherlock possibilities two or three times per episode. I resent this transparent attempt at manipulation; there’s no intention of actually going there.
Which, resentment aside, is probably just as well. Sherlock is as afore-mentioned a sociopath - I have no idea why Moffat thought sociopathy would be a winning character trait - and John should run, not walk, for the exit.
But I might have forgiven all this, or cheerfully ignored it at least, were Sherlock half - a quarter! - as brilliant as he thinks he is. The nadir occurs in the first episode, when he chases down a taxicab because he thinks there’s a serial killer riding in it, but - it never occurs to him that the killer might be the cab driver. Never mind he’s just described the killer as, oh, someone exactly like a cab driver!
WORST DETECTIVE EVER.
