Sherlock: The Great Game

[strange_complex]

I've ended up with oddly mixed feelings about this series now that it is over. Some things about it have been so consistently good - especially the design, the camerawork, and the characterisation of Sherlock himself. I love the way that this Holmes dances the line between being cringe-makingly loathsome and yet also exciting and fascinating and just understatedly nice enough that our sympathies remain with him. And I think Benedict Cumberbatch is doing a brilliant job, not only with the grand gestures but also with the small details which really bring the character to life. The original stories are used beautifully without weighing down the new stories that the series is trying to tell; most of the dialogue and the supporting characters are detailed and rich and witty and intriguing; and most of the plots are neatly structured and satisfyingly resolved. Heck, even the various tie-in websites actually do provide genuine added value, even if the supposed hidden messages on Sherlock's site hardly seem like the work of a master criminal.

And yet... and yet some things which seemed incredibly promising early on have ended up disappointing.

Looking back over my first post about it, I see that I was excited at what presenting Sherlock's face upside down on the first occasion that we meet him was signalling about the series' intentions to invert old tropes. But although I do think that Sherlock and Watson themselves as characters have been very nicely brought forward into the modern world, the rest of what's going on around them unfortunately oozes with unexamined tropes which have most certainly not been inverted at all. The second episode was the clearest example of this, with all the Mystic Chinese Yellow Peril business that I noted in my write-up of it; but as innerbrat has shown very convincingly, some terrifyingly prejudicial homophobic tropes have emerged over the course of the series too.

In the first episode, the little references to how Watson and Sherlock weren't a couple - not that there's anything wrong with that of course! - didn't seem so bad, but they've happened repeatedly in every single episode now. I do think it's noticeable that all of the awkward denials have consistently come from Watson, while Sherlock has been much less interested in the issue. So, for example, when Watson said in this episode that he was glad no-one had seen Sherlock ripping his clothes off in a darkened swimming pool because 'people might talk', Sherlock merely shrugged and replied 'People do little else'. I think it's perfectly possible that the emphasis on Watson's awkwardness with the issue is there partly to give Sherlock the opportunity to be entirely at ease with it by contrast - and I do like the latter part of that equation. But I also completely agree with innerbrat that Watson's side of it has been horribly overdone and has become unpleasant; and that adding in a bunch of negative gay stereotypes this week has been pretty much the last straw on this front.

I note also from my first post that, while recognising that the format of the show and its central relationship simply doesn't allow as much room for strong female characters as I'd ideally like, I was also still pretty optimistic about the ones we had met thus far: particularly Sally Donovan, the police sergeant, and Mycroft's mysterious assistant, Anthea. But they have disappointed, too. Anthea has completely disappeared, as indeed did Sally in the second episode. And Sally's return in episode three has been distinctly disappointing. In the first episode her snipings at Sherlock were intriguing - they hinted at an interesting backstory which had given her some reason to hate him so much, and also promised that there would be a consistent voice in the series to challenge and question Sherlock. But none of that has emerged. We've been given no reason for her hostility and no real deconstruction of Sherlock's character - just what sounds like a load of petty childish griping and a usage of the word 'freak' that I'm distinctly uncomfortable with.

Then also there is Sarah - given a promising introduction in episode two, but already starting to disappoint by the end, when Watson had the presence of mind to tip over the chair he was tied to, so that he could wriggle over and save her from the cross-bow, but she somehow didn't realise that she could actually save herself in exactly the same way. The scene between her and Watson early on in this week's episode had some promise - I liked the way she offered Watson breakfast, and then added "Well, you'll have to make it yourself, because I'm going for a shower", for example. It wasn't anything major - just a nice piece of small-detail characterisation that kept her from being a total wash-out. But again, that's all she got before disappearing again.

I think a lot of the problems here probably stem from the very limited scope of a three-episode run - even if those episodes are each 90 minutes long. It means that many of the characters who seemed so promising early on just haven't had time to be developed properly - and in the squeeze of a limited run, it seems to be the female characters in particular who have suffered. What makes that so especially frustrating is the efforts which the first episode seemed to be making to set up interesting and intriguing characters whom I wanted to learn more about - a promise which was then never delivered on. If they'd just been fairly mediocre in the first place, I wouldn't have minded so much. Entrusting each episode to a different writer obviously hasn't helped much with this: it's noticeable that Lestrade, Mycroft and Sally Donovan vanished entirely from the middle episode, while even the character of Sherlock lost the nasty edge which kept him so interesting in the first and third. On the plus side, I think Watson has undergone a steady and plausible development from the bored, traumatised veteran of the first episode to the active and competent investigator of the third. But Moffat and Gatiss as co-creators really should have taken steps to ensure that this was happening more consistently for the secondary characters as well.

Some things have felt rushed, too - especially the introduction of Moriarty. The unveiling of his 'great game' in episode three really needed to come after a good ten hours' worth of getting used to Sherlock's modus operandi - not to mention coming to believe that he might plausibly attract the attentions of a criminal mastermind. Besides, after some of the discussions we had about Moriarty's identity right here on my very own journal, I was kind of disappointed that in the end he turned out to be... just Moriarty - even if he was also a seemingly-innocuous character we'd encountered earlier in the same episode, and even if we were for a moment presented with the thrilling possibility that he might be Watson. I still think his turning out to be Anthea would have been way cooler.

So, yeah. The stories are gripping, the visuals are beautiful, and Sherlock, Watson, Mycroft and Lestrade are all well-enough developed to make me want to come back for more. It's just a pity about the rushed schedule, under-developed characters and poor handling of minority groups. But it has definitely been nice to have something this well put-together showing over the summer when most cult TV series are on hiatus, and I am very happy to hear that they will be making more of it. I have already pre-ordered the box set, and will doubtless be back with my thoughts on the unaired pilot which it includes once it has arrived. Give it a bit longer and a rethink on the unexamined tropes front, and this could just start to present Granada's Jeremy Brett series with some serious competition. But it has some way to go just yet.

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Comments

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I found Moriarty's wandering accent distracting and really irritating, he sounded as if he was trying to do an impression of Graham Norton on helium whilst being choked at times.