Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves, Mark Gatiss, Louise Brealey, Amanda Abbington, Timothy Carlton, Wanda Ventham, Lasco Atkins, Elizabeth Coyle, Paul Warren, Paul Dawkins.
Sherlock lives and all of London can breathe just that little bit more comfortably and soundly as they drift off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that the game is back on…
For two years, audiences have been asking themselves just how the great detective could have survived a fall from the top of the hospital after his confrontation with Moriarty, for two years that question has only been avoided having to be answered by both Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss as both Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman forged outward into the cinematic world and rightly so if The Hobbit is anything to go by, but the answer really isn’t the issue. The problem would be how Sherlock Holmes would fare with those he liked and got on with once his self-enforced exile to the land of the imagined dead was over.
Imagine your best friend having faked his death and then miraculously appear before you, dressed as that most ordinary of people, the ones that see everything but are never seen, the high class waiter, just before you ask the one you love to marry you. In all respects Doctor Watson’s lack of refinement at the crucial moment in The Empty Hearse was quite understandable, wouldn’t it be easier to throttle Sherlock Holmes than have to listen to the amount of ways he could have survived.
Two years between series is a long time to wait, you run the risk of alienating fans, watching them disappear as they find new programmes to latch onto, to fall in love with and run down at every available possibility on social networks. Thankfully fans of the 21st Century version of Baker Street’s finest resident are a forgiving breed it seems and willing to wait and for that alone both actors and script writers should be grateful.
London has changed, Doctor Watson, portrayed with great grace and shining brilliance by Martin Freeman, a brilliance that perhaps only Edward Hardwick could in his day match, has changed but thankfully however Sherlock Holmes hasn’t. He is still frustratingly brilliant, his eye for attention, the smallest detail that everybody ignores, is still keen and whereas the late Jeremy Brett was arguably the definitive version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s work, what Benedict Cumberbatch brings to the role is a quiet manic infusion. He is the accessible Holmes, a man not devoid of humour and who can, despite the protestations; work out humanity, just not the human behind it.
The Empty Hearse was well worth waiting for, stylish, stunning and so very Sherlock.
Ian D. Hall