The BBC's SHERLOCK starring Benedict Cumberpatch & Martin Freeman

[junior94]

Well the word I'd heard recently, that series 3 was going to have a cliffhanger just as big as if not even bigger than series 2's was. woooooowwwww. Just finished "His Last Vow", this was fucking mindblowing. And I mean, being as huge a canon fan that I am, I kind of already had a general idea where they were going after the end of series 2, but with this... they really are off the reservation (though in such a (possibly) awesome way).

and, now we've got word that series 4 and 5 are basically already both plotted out, and shooting for series 4 is officially signed for, just not known yet. At least Martin's pretty much done with The Hobbit now. Especially with the way Moffat announced that s4 & 5 were already figured out, I'd love if they turn around and tell us that both series will more or less be shot in one big overall block. and I wouldn't mind even if they still wanted to put like 6 months in between the broadcast of each season.

[JRS1386]

Just finished Season 3. The Wedding episode was phenomenal. This show is so awesome

[junior94]

oh and forgot to mention, I just about flipped out when I opened my mailbox yesterday. Sherlock is the cover story for Entertainment Weekly this week, with a big fat headshot of BC on the front. actually there's a whole sort of sub-story about the renewed appreciation of British TV over here in the states, thanks to so much streaming online. hell the hours I've wiled away on youtube with so many of the brilliantly funny comedy/panel shows that the BBC and Channel 5 has, etc...

It's still kinda weird to think there are all these people who are only just now watching the episodes I've already watched the majority of these last 3 like at least 4 times now.

Though I do have to admit, multiple viewings now of "His Last Vow" has let the seams more easily standout of some plot holes and general story problems.

[Panther41]

Fantastic show that I cannot say enough good things about. The chemistry among the actors is phenomenal, the cinematography & editing style are adventurous and interesting, and the performances themselves are pitch-perfect. I'm really glad they limit themselves to 3 episodes each season, (a) because it's easy to keep up and (b) because we don't have a chance to get burnt out on the characters or see them diluted with filler episodes. Sure, there are television shows that go full seasons without losing the potency of their characters, but the intensity of each Sherlock episode if part of the pleasure.

I am SO glad they brought Moriarty back! That character--that personality--is fascinating and really deserves another go. I thought his death seemed too easily faked... and thought it was fantastic that Sherlock essentially keeps him locked up in an asylum at the very lowest level of his "mind palace", showing that he recognizes a value, albeit a dangerous value, in the character's brilliant madness.

Click the "Show Spoiler" Button to reveal hidden text.

[two-by-twostep]

FINALLY got to watch and finish series/season 3. I was going to respect the PBS broadcast and not torrent the series....until I found out that my local PBS station wasn't broadcasting the series starting January 19th, but instead made the wise choice to broadcast starting February 13th. What the hell kind of bullshit is that?? So I downloaded the series immediately but due to wedding planning my fiancee and I were only able to finish the series yesterday.

Warning: Spoilers below.

But man what a ride. All of the episodes were great (though I do have minor complaints about each). Like you guys have said though, Sign of Three was probably the best - just incredible storytelling. Obviously the acting is excellent (Gatiss steals almost every scene with the sharpest dry wit I've heard in years), but my biggest takeaway is the cinematography/editing. Each episode has sequences where I was in disbelief in terms of how they pulled it off: Episode 1 - the "Mind Palace" courtroom; Episode 2 - drunk Sherlock; Episode 3 - the near death experience.

All due praise aside, I have to confess I'm a bit worried. This series I thought started tending to the fantastical a bit - which only made me more worried with the revelation that Moriarty is coming back. The writers are on a very thin rope in my opinion - if they just willy-nilly bring him back without a solid believable explanation (one that was planned out years ago), then the show will become a supernatural thriller where even death clearly has no significance. One of the many things about this show I love is how grounded it is, but if the explanation for M. coming back is nothing more than "he had a blood packet on the back of his head that exploded when he pulled the trigger" then I will be EXTERMELY disappointed - it will undermine the credibility of the entire show....not to mention Sherlock's perceptive abilities.

Click the "Show Spoiler" Button to reveal hidden text.

All that said, the writing / acting / directing / etc, etc is just so damn good I have every confidence that series 4 and 5 with continue being as excellent as the first 3.

[Tomriddle]

Last Vow was awesome. I could really have done with more CAM, that guy was badass. And the cliffhanger? Ultra badass.

I will say that Season 3 needed some more Sherlock sleuthing, though... I understand they were going for a different thing this season, but it's not entirely to my liking.

[JRS1386]

Originally Posted by DMBenjamin

FINALLY got to watch and finish series/season 3. I was going to respect the PBS broadcast and not torrent the series....until I found out that my local PBS station wasn't broadcasting the series starting January 19th, but instead made the wise choice to broadcast starting February 13th. What the hell kind of bullshit is that?? So I downloaded the series immediately but due to wedding planning my fiancee and I were only able to finish the series yesterday.

Warning: Spoilers below.

Blah, blah... teleblah

All that said, the writing / acting / directing / etc, etc is just so damn good I have every confidence that series 4 and 5 with continue being as excellent as the first 3.

Dude... [ spoiler] [ /spoiler] next time

[junior94]

I don't really personally mind at all, but it feels like DMBenjamin has been around here well long enough that he knows how to use a real spoiler tag. It seems kinda odd you'd bother to write out "warning spoilers", and not simply use the actual tag, if you really do intend to not mess up other people. but whatever.


The whole thing with the cliffhanger for me, what makes it weird is, I feel like ultimately the full quality of this episode can't be judged until I know where they're going with this twist. because there's a certain element just on the surface that's like "are you fucking kidding me? You just bring him back to life like that?" Like it's potentially REALLY lame, you had such a great overall story for the Moriarty character, this is something a very standard network drama would do. Plus it's allowing just an absurdly easy out for the character of Sherlock, after the hell he was looking at for the action he took.
BUT... that's looking at it thru the worst possible lens. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have shown me enough overall that I'm perfectly willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. That doing such a potentially cheesy twist like that will be VERY worth it in the end. I mean like I think I said before, there's a "three Moriartys" thing that other people mention from canon, but nothing about that immediately springs to mind (despite how much a fan I am). Because it can't simply be the same guy, if there will be a living, breathing Moriarty in series 4. He's dead, and I don't see this show going the supernatural route. So if it's a twin (or one of triplets) brother or what, I don't know...


and btw, just to reiterate/build on what I said previously, multiple viewings of each of the episodes now, The Last Vow has easily become the "worst" of series 3 for me now. But of course that's not to say it's bad. It's more about how crazy fucking good that The Sign Of Three was. I mean one of the episodes has to rank "last".

[JRS1386]

Maybe it is some sort of deadman's release shit. Once Moriarty was dead for a while he had a plan set in motion for shit to go down with him no longer around? It is really hard to guess where this show is going (which is a good thing).

[whodat]

My wife has been into this show since Day 1 and she got me to FINALLY watch the initial episode this weekend on Netflix. Needless to day, I am hooked. The writing, acting, filming, stories, how the characters mesh on screen, the simple effects showing you how Sherlock's mind works, the integration of today's technology into the story but still sticking with the original premise of the characters... could go on and on. Bottom line, top notch show. Only 2 episodes in and can't wait to watch another tonight.

[jayman414]

I have read that a special episode will take place before season 4 starts. I am not sure if that means an episode by the end of the year or not but it might mean a Christmas special depending on what you read.

[DoDaFoo]

The Christmas special won't air until Christmas of 2015. So we have a year and a half til we get a new episode.

[junior94]

yea and if I'm remembering what I read right about the shooting, we then won't even be getting the three series 4 episodes until way into the latter half of 2016.

[JRS1386]

Such a fantastic series, sucks about the scheduling

[RJP2741]

I just finished watching all 3 seasons/series over the last 2 weeks. Cumberbatch is amazing, he and Freeman have great chemistry. The show is at its best, imo, when Moriarty is in play, so I'm very excited to see where this goes in Season 4.

[junior94]

They aren't nearly quite the same "flavor", but for those of you who've now really gotten into the characters from this show, to hold you over you might find it worth it to go and check out the Jeremy Brett series from the 80s/90s. Cumberbatch himself has cited it as a touchstone, and a lot of hardcore fans have liked Brett's take the most over the years. I think most if not all of them are on netflix (and failing that, youtube). It's more of a straight up adaptation of the original stories, and taking place back when they were written.

[junior94]

Well I've definitely already heard from some others that were (even massively?) disappointed by this Christmas special, using the "it was all a dream" crutch. But no, I've said for a long time now, you CAN get away with 'it was all a dream' as the ultimate answer for your story, if it's not just done for the sake of itself, and the writers had just boxed themselves into a corner. But here it was used in a very specific way, it was all handled in a proper context, and I was thoroughly entertained by it. I'd had a sneaking suspicion for a long time now that despite Moffat's remarks to the contrary (seriously, do fans not realize how much he's just straight up lying in interviews constantly when talking about either Sherlock or Doctor Who?), it was NOT going to be just entirely this fun little one-off special. That "oh wouldn't it be cool if we could just once use our actors but playing in the original time period?" was not going to be that simple and straight forward. I didn't know HOW exactly it would be, but I was confident it would be ultimately tied to the series proper in some way, and I mean beyond just cheeky dialogue references.


And in fact one theory I've already heard by several people that's pretty damn interesting, is a play on Sherlock insisting to John that "it's never twins!" But remember, twins doesn't always mean the same gender. That what was going on in the 1880s story was an allusion to the fact that Janine is Moriarty's sister, and has been aligned with him for the entire show. That yea, they stated unequivocally that Moriarty IS DEAD, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have had a shit ton of plans set to be pushed into motion by others in his absence. And that Janine could be an integral part of that. They do have a general enough sort of a resemblance, and they're both Irish.

Alright and this is totally aside from the Abominable Bride special episode here, but when doing some reading earlier today I came across this older theory. Although I think the evidence already shows this is absolutely true. That, if you remember the woman who was the jury foreman for Moriarty's trial in 2x03 "The Reichenbach Fall", her kids that she saw on the hotel room TV were being threatened to insure she'd help get him aquitted... well that was the very same family that the cab driver from 1x01 "A Study In Pink" was poisoning people on behalf of Moriarty to protect and make them as much money as possible.

http://writemeastoryofsolitude.tumbl...ies-in-asip-or

[Jake]

I rather enjoyed that episode... makes me want to rewatch the whole series yet again

[junior94]

so we've got not just the new series 4 teaser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-hNzXaNi8Y


But also the 3 keywords they usually put out during the hiatus that, in SOME (possibly very convoluted) way point to what each of the episodes may be about.
This year's are...

Thatcher
Smith
Sherrinford

[Tomriddle]

I rather enjoyed the Christmas Special (within reason), and am looking forward to Season 4

[Tomriddle]

Just saw the Season 4 teaser, and goddamn, it looks fantastic.

[junior94]

To regular viewers of the show this isn't in the least surprising, we all expected it but still it's nice to get official confirmation. The series 4 premiere will debut on January 1, 2017, on BBC over there and PBS here on the same day. The next two episodes will air on the subsequent sunday nights, same exact thing they did in 2015 with series 3 (and the special last new years day).

The premiere is titled The Six Thatchers, which is a play on the ACD short story The Six Napoleans where a thief on the run from the cops stashes the goods in the mold that's being used to produce a bunch of Napolean statues in bulk in this factory. The beef of the story is the guy then going around and destroying each statue he can find (and killing the owner) cause he doesn't know which one contains the stuff he stole.

We know episode 2 is titled The Lying Detective, a reference to The Dying Detective, and this is the one that seems to be the main one featuring this new villain Culverton Smith played by Toby Jones seen in the trailer. while the Dying Detective is by itself definitely a good SH story, initially I really didn't think they'd go in that direction yet given what they've done in the series so far, just that cause the crux of it is Holmes secretly portraying himself as being totally at death's door to fool the man who's trying to kill him. So I didn't really see a big "death fake out" happening this soon after series 2. But, obviously Moffat & Gatiss have never done just straight up adaptations of the stories, for one thing almost all of them aren't nearly long enough for that in their format (hell even the Jeremy Brett 80s/90s series had to wind up padding out most stories for their 43 minute episodes).


They have so far held back the title for episode 3, presumably because it would be a 1 and/or 2 spoiler. But the word "Sherrinford" as I mention in an earlier post they gave as a clue word before, that refers to a supposed third Holmes brother, but that it's worth noting does NOT come from official Holmes cannon. It was something invented later on in an original Sherlock Holmes story written by some other writer after Doyle's death (literally anyone can write a SH story or film a show/movie without having to pay any copyright fee, the characters are in the public domain).

[KevinTH]

Never seen this show "live". We started watching about a year and a half ago on Netflix and absolutely fell in love with it. Very excited for some new episodes. We just watched the Christmas special from last year and it was alright. It was entertaining enough, but it definitely felt a little forced. This has become one of my favorite shows.

[hailtopitt]

wait, so they don't release the episodes on Netflix all at once?

[bowa36]

Originally Posted by hailtopitt

wait, so they don't release the episodes on Netflix all at once?

There's a lot of waiting

[hailtopitt]

well, shit...

[Dramageek]

Originally Posted by hailtopitt

well, shit...

Yeah, unfortunately it's not a Netflix original. It's a BBC show that airs in this country as part of PBS Masterpiece, like Downton Abbey did. So we get one episode per week. Then it goes to Netflix.

[hailtopitt]

Originally Posted by Dramageek

Yeah, unfortunately it's not a Netflix original. It's a BBC show that airs in this country as part of PBS Masterpiece, like Downton Abbey did. So we get one episode per week. Then it goes to Netflix.

yea i knew it was BBC but the show Black Mirror was also BBC for it's first 2 seasons and i think they were released all at once

maybe i'm wrong

[Dramageek]

Originally Posted by hailtopitt

yea i knew it was BBC but the show Black Mirror was also BBC for it's first 2 seasons and i think they were released all at once

maybe i'm wrong

I'm partially mispeaking. The seasons end up on Netflix all at once. But they air on BBC/PBS Masterpiece first. I don't remember if Black Mirror aired on TV over here first.

[hailtopitt]

yea that's what i meant. pretty sure Black Mirror went right to Netflix even when it was a BBC product without hitting TV first

but maybe i'm wrong that's just what i remember doing