Reasons I’d like to recommend the BBC series Sherlock:
- The show gets the character. Sherlock is an obsessive, borderline neurotic jerk who’s driven by boredom rather than justice; when he gets antsy he idly fires a gun at his apartment wall to let off steam. He doesn’t give a shit about saving anyone’s life, but will risk death to prove that he’s right. The character of Sherlock has persisted because he’s an interesting person, not a mystery-solving device, and Moffat nails that.
- The mysteries are silly and grandiose, but totally gripping; the scripts are tight, and the editing is snappy and clever. It’s perfect popcorn television.
- The show is full of little thematic flourishes, like the tilt-shifted title cards — they’re pretty, but they also subtly underscore how Sherlock views the world — observing it, as though through a microscope.
- Maybe it’s been done elsewhere, but this is the first show I’ve seen that makes use of modern communication in a way that feels totally effortless and natural. Characters on most television shows make a big deal about “going online” (as in “Wait! Maybe we can find out — online!”) Sherlock and Watson plop on the couch and flip open their laptops as soon as they walk in the door, just like we do. Screenwriters typically avoid using text messages or emails as plot devices because they’re considered difficult to make visually interesting; Sherlock solves this problem by simply printing the text on screen. It works beautifully, and results in tricky little scenes in which a character has one conversation face-to-face while carrying on an entirely different one over text message. It’s such a simple and obvious technique, you wonder why every show for the past 10 years hasn’t been doing it this way.
Reasons I feel the need to hedge that recommendation:
- The show features a distinct thread of gay panic humor that makes me seriously wince. At least once in every episode, someone mistakes Sherlock and Watson for gay lovers, the comedy angle on this being “Wouldn’t it be hilariously embarrassing if someone thought you were gay? How humiliating!” As a execrable topper, in episode three Sherlock “deduces” that a man is gay by “detecting” that he’s wearing an earring and makeup. The fact that an otherwise top-tier show has these blemishes, along with other British sitcoms I’ve seen, makes me wonder if British culture is simply twenty years behind America in terms of their attitude towards gay people; maybe it’s just me, but I feel like we stopped finding the mere existence of homosexuality hilarious a few years ago. (At one point, Watson even says “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”, as though he were in a Seinfeld episode from 1993.) Any Englishmen care to weigh in?
That said, 90 seconds of nose-holding isn’t too high of a price to pay for such a great show; also, Googling the last topic introduced me to my new favorite blog, Gay Sherlock Holmes. So, on balance, heartily recommended.
