Sherlock: The Final Problem

When Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and the other guy reinvented Sherlock Holmes for the digital generation they struck television gold. Benny The Cumblepatch was perfect casting as the great detective, Martin from The Office an excellent Watson, Rupert Posh splendid as Lestrade, and Una Stubbs' tears great too.

Writing things up on the screen to allow viewers to see how astonishingly swift Holmes can operate his grey cells was clever enough to have been invented by Sherlock himself. The bromance between the two main characters was kept just shy enough of overkill to make their bond effective and emotionally compelling.

Best of all the scripts and the cases were, for the most part, of such high standard that audiences rode a switchback of tension, excitement and satisfaction made all the more fulfilling by cinematic camera work and production values.

For the most part.

In this, probably the last ever Bumblyman and Freedent instalment in detecting and adventuring, Moffat and Gatiss appear to have foregone many of the qualities that made their show such a success, apparently more interested in one-upping themselves, Conan-Doyle and possibly even John Logie Baird in an attempt to create the single greatest piece of televisual excellence ever. And failing.

Sentimentally cloying rather than genuinely touching, the emotional impact of this episode aggravates the gag reflexes rather than the frontal lobes. The plot is unnecessarily complicated, way more unbelievable than that whole business with the surviving a fall from a rooftop and extremely badly resolved.

To distract us from these cold, hard facts we are presented with the psychotic younger sibling of the Holmes brothers while the pre-recorded ghost of Jim Moriaty is dangled in front of our reddened eyes like we're two year olds unable to contain our excitement when we see a jack-in-the-box. The pre-recorded message thing is a really annoying motif of this series, what with Mary Watson's appearances in the second and third eps being largely restricted to maybe we don't miss her as much as we thought we might DVD cameos. Moffat and Gatiss may very well have taped their own contributions to the script meetings rather than sitting down and formulating a truly effective conclusion to their otherwise genius offering.

If the BBC persuades them to do more I for one will anticipate Sherlock's return less enthusiastically than I have done previously. One episode too many, run out of ideas, lacking in true drama aside from the Molly Hooper phone call. The word I've been avoiding so far is 'boring'. Sorry Sherl, for once it all left me cold and a long way from the edge of my seat. Can we have Luther back now please?

Sherlock: The Lying Detective

How do you solve a problem like John Watson not wanting to have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes any more because of that business with Watson's wife taking a bullet for the detective and being all dead afterwards? Apparently you solve it by going back on hardcore drugs, if you're Sherlock. Apparently.

Many things are revealed in this episode. Mrs Hudson has a smoking hot car and can drive like a madwoman. Mycroft Holmes might even stoop into human behaviour enough to consider illicit liaisons now and then. Watson talks to the visible apparition of his dead wife. This last is a plot device. It's not something he did when she was alive, obviously. It's a way of enabling the audience to keep up with nuances of the storyline even in the absence of the traditional conversations where Watson is perplexed and Holmes shows off by explaining how incredibly boring it is that no one else understands what he does.

Watson isn't perplexed. He's angry. Holmes isn't showing off. He's stoned out of his fucking mind. And taking to Twitter to accuse Toby Jones of being a serial killer. Jones plays a character not entirely unlike Jimmy Savile in some respects - creepy, philanthropic, fingers in many pies, high profile public figure, up to no good and some people know about it - but he's also the Dream Lord from Matt Smith's first season as Doctor Who. And Dobby's voice. And a detectorist. Only he's none of those other things in this, he's just some greasy millionaire businessman Sherlock wants to take down. Despite being stoned out of his fucking mind.

It all gets a bit out of hand. Watson and Holmes are reunited and hang out with Dobby, I mean Mr Smith (not Matt Smith, Toby Jones's character with a posh, implausible first name) but it's not a very comfortable time, what with Sherlock being all 'you're a serial killer' in Smith's grill and Smith being all "bitch I'm not" and Watson being all "Sherlock you're stoned out of your fucking mind" and punching him a lot. A real heck of a lot.

Which means Sherlock is in this odd hospital that Smith has fingers in (now that's very Savile, eh?) being treated for drug addledness and the results of punchings. And this is where Smith wants him as he can now try to kill him. Because guess what bitches, he IS a serial killer. And Sherlock records his confession with a walking stick. Honest, he does. And John saves him because he's now seen the same DVD of Mary telling Sherlock to save John from himself that ended last week's episode and realises Holmes was trying to make the Doctor save him to save himself. Confused? You won't be. I wasn't.

Loose ends. The bus woman from last week. Turns out that John didn't do the wild thing with her, just texted her and thought about doing the wild thing with her. Which he confesses to the not actually there apparition of Mary in front of Sherlock. Like you do. And then he goes back to his new therapist who turns out to be various other people from both episodes. Oh and Mycroft and Sherlock's sister. Then she shoots John in the face. And credits happen so we don't know if he's dead and have to watch next week. Clever that.

Sherlock: The Six Thatchers

Do you like Sherlock? Do you like spoilers? Then you'll love this review of The Six Thatchers. Unless you don't like sarcasm. Or curse words.

Episode One, Season Four and the Watsons have a baby. That's usually what happens when someone is pregnant, after a while they stop being pregnant and a baby appears. Slight hint of the good doctor being a bit of a bad doctor and having a fling with some random bus woman but who cares? Sherlock has been reprieved because of the Moriaty conundrum. Nobody calls it that but they should. It would be a great title for an episode. I'm great at pretend episode titles. I'm still waiting for the BBC to take me up on Doctor Who And The Spacey Bastards.

Sherlock's approach to working out what Little Jim's malevolent legacy might be is to act as though nothing has changed, except for the Watsons having a baby. Post aborted suicide mission to Eastern Europe is painless, it takes on many cases, one of which is about somebody smashing busts of Margaret Thatcher. Bad, bad liberal political bias from the BBC. Except it's not a political act, it's a mysterious stranger trying to retrieve an item hidden inside one of the busts. They know it's there because they put it there. Six years ago. After nasty antics alongside Mary Watson in a betrayed undercover mission in Tbilisi.

Keeping up? Well don't. Let it all unfold. You're supposed to think it's all about Moriaty, possibly connected to some stupid old pearl. And then you're shocked when it isn't and we realise Mary's former colleague wants to murder her to death because he thinks she betrayed him. But she didn't. Someone else did. Not Moriaty. Someone female. Not Lady Whatsername from the last proper episode (we're ignoring the drug hallucinations of last year's special). But someone. Ooh who can it be? I bet she's a right shithead: betraying people is what shitheads do.

Mary pretends to be some other people to flee the country and keep John and the baby (yes it has a name but no lines so I'm not telling you) safe. But Sherlock is cleverer than her. And her former colleague is clever too and they have a bit of a shooty moment in which we realise that the someone female who did the betraying isn't Mary. Well, we already knew that, right, because we like her. But it is now confirmed. Yay! She's my favourite Watson. And John is too.

Oh dear. Things and stuff and stuff and things happen and all of a sudden the Watsons are a trio no longer. No, John hasn't moved in his fancy woman for some farcically saucy seventies style Bohemianism. Mary's been killed to death. Taking a bullet for Sherlock. See what they did there? Debt paid. Former undercover operative with cleverness and skill set that steals focus from the title character removed from series.

Cue John blaming Sherlock and shunning his company. Cue pre-recorded posthumous message from Mary to Sherl asking him to save John. From himself. From his grief. Cue a window into the detective's own grief and guilt in those big old Cumblebum eyes. Why doesn't he just bend space and time and use mystical forces to revive Mary? Oh, because he isn't Doctor Strange in this one. Bollocks! He is good. Acting wise. Good acting from the Cumblyman.

And from Amanda Abbington, really going out on a virtuoso performance. Martin Freeman is almost an extra until the end when John's absence from Sherlock's life flavours a powerful but not overtly sentimental denouement. Still, he looks good with a daisy in his hair. And on buses.

Two episodes to come. How do our boys sort out their issues and bond yet again? Perhaps one of them could fake their own death and then come back disguised as a waiter.

Oh, and none of this was to do with Moriaty. Unless it later turns out that it was. Oh and the betrayer was a Whitehall secretary.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Not having been an avid viewer of much in the way of JJ Abrams' output prior to the first instalment of his rebooted Star Trek, I must say that film made a huge impression on me. I'm a Whovian more than a Trekkie but do have a soft spot for Kirk and the gang (not a 70s funk band), and the camera flaring, explosion heavy, fire-everything mentality of Abrams' first Trek movie was pitch perfect. High expectations came with me when I headed for the second instalment, then.

Largely I was not disappointed although a little of the joy of seeing some wonderful reinterpretations of familiar characters was burnt out first time around (except McCoy - he's hilarious all day long). The action scenes are, if anything, even more tense and I literally found I was holding my breath towards the climax when a massive star ship plummets towards Star Fleet headquarters in a death-dive. Breathe, damn it, breathe; dying at the movies is a silly way to go and it makes your face all purple.

The Kirk/Spock bromance continues to dominate but, just so religious types and those from the Deep South (Croyden) can assure themselves the Captain and his First Officer are not actually getting it on, Spock's unlikely relationship with Uhuru is still ongoing. She, like last time, has a few key scenes of her own (Nichelle Nichols must be envious) as do most of the supporting cast - Sulu, Chekov, McCoy. Scotty actually does a lot of running around and is integral to some of the later action which must have been such a rush for Simon Pegg. Yet his accent is so erratic that I wonder why they bothered with it.

After all, the main villain of the piece (and here comes a spoiler) is none other than Khan (KHAN!) but Benedict Cumberbatch shows no interest in trying to emulate Ricardo Montelban's Hispanic tones. Yes, that's right, you read me right - KHAN! Only this time around it is Kirk he comes close to killing (does actually kill him but not for long - watch it if you don't know already). And this time it is Spock who yells 'KHAN!' in the manner of a man who is attempting to expel a particularly reluctant stool which he has inexplicably named.

Saw it coming, to be honest but it works. Boy does it work. Bang, crash, fight, boom, plunging ships, gravity failing on the Enterprise - I was as caught up in the action as a five year old boy is caught up when the string connecting his gloves half strangles him as he puts on an oversized raincoat.

I love how Abrams plays with the existing mythology of Star Trek. He's allowed, it's an alternate timeline. Thus Khan is more charming and yet even more vicious than his counterpart in the original movies (and, indeed, the TV series). Thus women only have to look at Kirk to start removing their clothing. Thus Nimmoy can give Quinto spoilers mid-film, the sneaky so-and-so.

Overall I think the first film just edges Into Darkness for invention and interplay between the main cast. Khan is a far better villain than old grumpy-face Nero, though, so maybe it is a question of swings and roundabouts?

If you love spacey stuff, big a bang a boom stuff, action happening so fast you cannot keep up with it all stuff and hand-held, edgy camera work (which everyone praises Abrams for yet overlooks the fact that he sort of nicked it from Joss Whedon's Serenity), then you will love lots of the stuff in this movie. And if you don't like any of that stuff: 

1. what are you reading this for? and, 
2. you and I cannot be friends any more.

Doctor Strange

He isn't Sherlock. He isn't Khan from Star Trek Beyond. He isn't that rubbish siege negotiator from Four Lions. He's strange. With a capital S. But he's kinda small S strange too.

Yes, Bendyback Cumblebath has entered the Marvel fray as the franchise's biggest oddball. The original comics were a sixties take on a normal human being acquiring superpowers not through exposure to radiation or technological genius but by delving deep into the world of mysticism. Like wow, dude, that's so hippy.

But he's not a hippy. No, he's an arrogant son of a bitch who also happens to be one of the greatest surgeons on the planet. He doesn't HAVE to be American even though he is in the source material, but he is played American so we know he isn't Sherlock. Or Khan. Or that negotiator. Or because Stan Lee would have had a heart attack if they'd messed with his counter-culture baby too much for its big screen debut.

One car crash and two fucked up hands later Dr Stephen Strange is so desperate to cure himself and return to arrogantly saving people's lives in an operating theatre that he alienates his former girlfriend (a disappointingly male-gaze empty shell of a character played, presumably with little enthusiasm, by Rachel McAdams) and heads to the Orient in search of salvation.

What he finds is Tilda Swinton as an ancient guru type. Oh she's allowed to have a British accent. She's allowed to be a woman which she most certainly was not in the graphic novels. She's also awesome, both as a character and as the actor playing that character (sorry, did I break the fourth wall? Geek off, you'll be complaining about spoilers next).

Tilda teaches Bendyback how to do the warping space in on itself stuff from Inception only more magic mushroom stylee but Mads Mikkelson can also do this and he's a bad guy. He's stolen bad naughty knowledge from Tilda's special books and is going to summon up ultimate evil to eat up this universe. Luckily there are, we learn, an infinite number of universes but we're humans so we only give a shit about the one we're in and Comfybath has to save everything and everyone. With some help from the Ancient One's non-bad disciples.

Do they succeed, you wonder, if you haven't seen the film. Let's just say a sequel is in the pipeline, shall we?

Cumblepatch is suitably strange to be Strange and suitably different from Mr Downey Jr not to make the character seem too much like a riff on Iron Man (with hocus pocus instead of a big metal suit). Mikkelson is a heavyweight enough villain to ensure the self-centred Strange rises to the occasion when required. The visuals are astonishing without overshadowing the action or the plot.

Plot - it's not the best and it's not the worst in the celluloid Marvel universe. It's a prolonged setting of the stage for the weird doctor to presumably get completely fruitloop on us next time out. It works well enough. I'd watch it again. I watch most things more than once if they have Tilda Swinton in them, though. And so should you.