The Bingeworthy series was created in 2026, as an homage to some of my favorite TV shows, once that I can sit through multiple episodes in one sitting (what the cognoscenti call "binging"). Each entry will cover several episodes that I think make the series worth binging. Sometimes I will vary it by picking one episode per season to highlight and other times I will just select a few outstanding episodes. (This will be especially important if a series went on for many years... I don't think ANYONE wants to see a 10+ episode post of a 10+ season highlight...)
Bingeworthy: Episode 2: Sherlock (2010-17)
Note: I gave some brief thought to just reprinting an earlier blog entry dedicated to Sherlock, but after reading it I decided to go this route instead. If you would like to see that earlier entry, then have at it through the link above.
Most everyone knows about Sherlock Holmes. Over the years there have been numerous movies and TV shows featuring the beloved character. Count Dracula holds the record for most appearances in film (about 270, according to AI). But Sherlock comes in at a close second (with 254, again according to AI). As I stated in the fist blog entry I did for this series, the Holmes character was often subject to the whims of the film industry, sometimes being wedged into more modern (at the time) scenarios.
I have in my book collection a book titled Sherlock Holmes on Screen. My copy is a first edition published in 2001, but a newer edition, updated in 2012, is available. (My first edition copy came out before the Robert Downey, Jr. iteration of the character and the BBC TV series I will discuss today.)
Holmes, it turns out, is not just limited to appearances in British and American film. He has appeared in German productions, such as Der Hund von Baskerville (The Hound of Baskerville), Danish productions, such as Det Hemmelige Dokument (The Secret Document), Chinese productions, such as Fu Er Mo Si Yu Zhong Guo Nu Xia (Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Heroine), Russian productions, such as Priklyucheniya Sherlocka Kholmsa i doktpra Vatsona (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson) and Portuguese films, such as O Xangô de Baker Street (The Baker Street Tango) {Gotta see if I can track down that one for next year's Luso World Blogathon}.
As for TV, many versions came from the UK and the BBC, including the lauded Jeremy Brett version from the 80's and one that featured Peter Cushing in the role of the great detective. There was an American TV version from 1954 featuring Ronald Howard, but that only lasted one season. Recently on American TV there was Elementary, with Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes living in New York, albeit without the traditional male Dr. Watson; in this case Lucy Liu played a psychiatrist hired by Holmes' father to keep an eye on him.
But my favorite iteration of the Holmes character, by far, is the 2010 BBC series, which pitted Holmes and Watson in modern day London. As I said before elsewhere, this is an interesting development, because usually I prefer my Holmes and Watson in Victorian England, rather than what I perceive to be manipulation in making them modern. And, although that's exactly what happened, it doesn't actually make me wince. The kudos for this lie mostly on the actor Benedict Cumberbatch to make it work for me, although I can't ignore the scriptwriters who "foisted" this change.
There were only four seasons of the series, and only 3 episodes in each season. I recommend ALL of the episodes, but I am going to highlight my favorite episode from each of the seasons. If you decide to dive in, however, I highly recommend you watch it from episode one, as there is a thread running through the entire series, especially the season 4 series.
Sherlock quite often injected little "Easter eggs", sly winks to the original stories which helped make the series more acceptable to purists (at least to ones who were amenable to that whole concept of Sherlock in the 21st century, anyway...) So you will see references below to where the stories got some inspiration from the canon.
"The Great Game" (Season 1 Episode 3; original broadcast Jan. 1, 2012) {Note: the "original broadcast" dates for these are the UK dates, not the US dates...}
In this episode we finally get to meet Sherlock Holmes' (Benedict Cumberbatch) arch-nemesis, Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott). {BTW: You can start with this one, if you wish, instead of the first episode "A Study in Pink". In the first two episodes there are hints to his existence, but he isn't really on stage until this one}.
The references to the original stories:
This episode brings out elements from "The Five Orange Pips" and "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans". The five Greenwich time signals parallels the pips, and, of course, the stolen plans by the Andrew West character are directly related to the Bruce-Partington story.
The episode starts out in typical Sherlock fashion. Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) is frustrated because there are no crimes worthy of his intellect to solve. But that's about to change.
Maybe not from the visit from his brother, however. Mycroft (Mark Gatiss), an upper level figure in the government wants Sherlock to investigate the death of a functionary, a man who may have stolen some secret plans for a missile defense system. (This is a direct parallel to an original Holmes story "The Adventure of Bruce-Partington Plans") But the mercurial Sherlock declines, mainly because he and Mycroft are rather competitive, as brothers will be.
The real meat of the episode involves Sherlock getting a mysterious message from a caller. It turns out that the caller is not the villain; it is someone that the villain has briefly kidnapped and then wired up with explosives. Through the voice of the victim the villain relays the parameters of the "game" he is playing.
Sherlock is given a brief period of time to solve the mystery or the villain will set off the bomb. This happens several times over the course of the episode. As Sherlock solves each crime, he lets the villain know of his solution through his blog and the original caller is allowed to reveal his or her location so the bomb can be dismantled.
The intense mental battle between Sherlock and the villain are what makes this episode click, but it would hardly be so worthy if the mysteries weren't intriguing themselves. Ultimately, it turns out that the villain is our nemesis who had only been hinted at in the previous two episodes; Moriarty.
And the final confrontation ends in a cliffhanger that hints at the next season. If you are old enough to remember the "Who shot J.R.?" cliffhanger from the TV series Dallas, I would bet that in the UK this was one of those water cooler moments, similar to that, that often happens in such shows. (This part of the episode is somewhat related to another story in the Holmes canon, "The Five Orange Pips")
The mystery of the death of the functionary from the beginning also plays into the story, and it's connection to the mysterious bomber fits in rather well. This episode also, more than most of them, really encapsulates the dichotomy of personalities between Watson and Holmes, with Holmes being adverse to showing any kind of emotion while Watson actually cares about the victims the villain has chosen to inflict his plans upon.
"The Hounds of Baskerville" (Season 2 Episode 2; original broadcast Jan. 8, 2012):
Note: It would be entirely to easy just to fast forward to the cliffhanger episode from season 2 as my choice. It is good. But then all three of them are, for that matter. But really, the most intriguing one touches upon another abiding interest of mine, that of secrecy in the government shadows...
The references to the original stories:
Obviously the primary source of inspiration for this episode is the novel "The Hound of the Baskervilles". The titular dog is a key to the mystery, But there are subtle references to other stories, including "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", which featured a similar mysterious gas. (And where else but at a secret government laboratory would you find such an insidious development...?) Also, a "bet" that Holmes claims to have with Watson to induce a guy to reveal knowledge that he is reluctant to give comes from an incident in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle".
The basic story involves a character named Henry Knight who has come to Holmes for help. Henry has been having nightmares related to the death of his father years earlier. Henry's father, at least by his memory, was attacked by, in his words, a "giant hound". Initially Holmes is reluctant to get involved, but the word "hound" intrigues him.
This leads to an investigation which results in Holmes and Watson going to a high security location called "Baskerville", which has parallels not only with secret government facilities in the US, but also in Great Britain. Holmes uses an ID of Mycroft, his brother, who is, as Holmes has noted, not only a bigwig in the government, but he actually "is the British government". Note: We get a hint of that in previous episodes, including the first episode in season 2.
There is quite a bit of intrigue involved in the case. Apparently at the base of it is the fact that the Baskerville facility is involved in some sort of hallucinatory drug meant to be used in chemical warfare with Britain's enemies. The solution hinges a lot on the fact that the word "hound" is an odd word to use, when just "dog" would be more appropriate in the common vernacular.
"The Empty Hearse" (Season 3 Episode 1; original broadcast Jan. 1, 2014):
Note: The episode picks up where season 2 left off, with Holmes having supposedly died by leaping off a building).
The cliffhanger at the end of season 2 showed Watson walking away from the grave of Holmes, with Holmes looking on from just outside of Watson's vision, thus everyone watching the series already knew that Holmes didn't really die, but it probably also became another of what is known as a "water cooler" moment (referenced above).
At the beginning Watson has moved on with his life. The story picks up two years later. Watson is about to ask Mary Morstan, his current girlfriend, to marry him when Holmes shows up. Unlike the ecstatic Watson in the classic "The Empty House" story that brought Holmes back from the dead in the canon, Watson here is incensed that Holmes didn't let him in on the truth, leaving him to grieve and eventually come to terms with the loss.
Holmes hasn't been entirely "on vacation" all this time. He was busy trying to dismantle Moriarty's evil empire. (Moriarty himself had died in the season 2 finale). But Holmes is back because Mycroft has information about an impending terrorist attack. Meanwhile many conspiracy theories have cropped up surrounding Holmes' "death", including a fun one proposed by one of Holmes' detractors in Scotland Yard. (The conspiracy theories are sort of a humorous jab, it seems to me, at the comparative conspiracies surrounding the death of John F. Kennedy, some of which imply that JFK did not actually die in Dallas on that fateful day).
More than any other episode in the series, this one throws a plethora of references to stories from the original Doyle stories. Besides the return of Holmes from the dead, there are either brief or sometimes even overt callbacks to such classic can as "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", "A Case of Identity", "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott" and above all, a peek into how Mary Morstan from "The Sign of Four" and Dr. Watson came to be together.
A lot of the story is centered on a celebration of an entirely British tradition, November 5th, the anniversary of the Guy Fawkes plan to blow up the House of Lords that was foiled back in the 17th century. As the new 21st century dawns, there is a new plan to do the same thing. In fact, the reason that Holmes makes his reappearance is because Mycroft brought him out of his "vacation" to look into a new terrorist plot, of which Mycroft only knows that there is something nefarious in the works, he just doesn't know what.
Aside from the intrigue of the terrorist plan, what really sets this episode apart is the introduction of Mary Morstan (Amanda Abbington). If you get involved in Mary's arc in the series you are going to be caught up in a very intriguing character. Mary is not just an afterthought in the story line in the TV series, unlike the canon of stories. She eventually becomes one of the key ingredients in a story that will knock the traditionalist Holmes aficionado for a loop.
"The Final Problem" (Season 4 Episode 3; original broadcast Jan. 15, 2017):
The what turned out to be (so far) the last Sherlock episode of the Cumberbatch-Freeman era turns out to be one of the most intriguing and convoluted stories in the entire series. It has all been leading up to this, although it ends up feeling somewhat like the producers tried to throw as much stuff into one episode because they knew it would be their last one. 13 episodes in (the side project "The Abominable Bride" is included in the pantheon, even though technically it is an independent project) and we get to see more bizarre twists than all of the other episodes combined.
A word of warning: If you don't commit to watching this series from beginning to end in order you may get lost with this one. Not only is it a wrap up of the arc of season 4, but it contains elements that extend from season 3, as well as some information that has been revealed since the beginning.
The episode opens with a little girl waking up on a plane where everyone, including the pilots, are passed out. A cell phone rings and she answers it and our old friend Jim Moriarty says "Welcome to the final problem". But, since Moriarty is, by this time, dead, there is something else entirely going on.
What is going on is Sherlock discovers that Mycroft has systematically eliminated Sherlock's memory of a sister, Eurus (Sian Brooke). See, years ago when they were kids, Eurus had been born a year after Sherlock. And Eurus turned out to be someone that makes Moriarty look like Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Eventually Mycroft had put Eurus in a high security prison because Eurus was a danger to polite society.
Except somehow Eurus has figured out how to circumvent the security system. And, it turns out, a few years prior to the current situation, Mycroft had made an egregious error by granting an unsupervised meeting between Eurus and Moriarty (who was still alive at the time). You know this can't be good.
Really, to get any deeper into this complicated story would be depriving you of the experience. Just to entice you however, think of Eurus as being much more devious and also much more intelligent than Hannibal Lecter (although I don't THINK Eurus ever dined on brains "with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti"...)
This episode takes elements from several stories in the canon, but most of them are just veiled references to brief mentions of characters found in the stories. The title itself is the same as the one in which Conan Doyle originally killed off Holmes, and since this is the final episode of the BBC series it is somehow fitting. Spoiler alert! Holmes doesn't die at the end of this episode however.
Ultimately, as I have stated, the Sherlock series is best watched in order, since the story arc presents details throughout that fit together as one major puzzle. Even though I chose the third episode of season 1 to highlight instead of the first episode, I usually recommend you start with the first episode as an introduction. If you aren't completely hooked (as I was) after the first one, then possibly it may not be your cup of tea.
That's it for this Bingeworthy episode. Keep coming back for more.
Quiggy
