Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Amanda Abbington, Louise Brealey, Rupert Graves, Mark Gatiss, Una Stubbs, Alistair Petrie, Vinette Robinson, Lara Pulver, Oliver Lansley, Alice Lowe, Yasmine Akram, Ed Birch, Jalaal Hartley, Adam Greaves-Neal, Alfie Enoch, Tim Chipping, Will Keen, Rita Arya, Georgina Rich, Debbie Chazen, Wendy Wason, Nicholas Asbury.
Most weddings end up feeling like murder so why not have Sherlock Holmes somewhere in the room to bring out the best in the proceedings?
As John Watson prepares for the biggest day of his life by marrying the one woman who is as proud of him as his best friend, the consulting detective is out of his mind, at one point resembling the parade of nervous people that line up for his help as his mouth opens and closes with no semblance of sanity, as he comes to grips with delivering a speech infront of a hundred people whilst at the same time using his razor sharp mind to solve not one mystery but three, two attempted murders and what makes his friends happy, for this alone The Sign of Three was television gold.
In the three series that Sherlock has graced the television screens this was moment that captured the humanity that lurked within the great detective. The moment in which viewers got see Sherlock Holmes act just like the rest of those he considers ordinary as he failed in the attempt of showing Doctor Watson a good night out as part of his stag night. You could never imagine Basil Rathbone or the great Jeremy Brett ever acting in such a way and that is why this 21st re-imagining of the man from Baker Street is arguably the finest incarnation going.
With a great story that allowed for some of the rather magnificent dialogue and the impressive Best Man’s speech, you have to have a superb cast in which to carry it off and this was an episode of Sherlock that had that great cast. With Una Stubbs at her playful best as Mrs Hudson, who also had the greatest back story afforded her and in which Ms. Stubbs eyes sparkled like Prometheus’s fire after a gallon of petrol poured on it, the much underrated Alistair Petrie portraying the under –fire James Sholto, the wonderful Oliver Lansley making a valuable and admirable contribution as one of the wedding guests, the exotic Lara Pulver in a sequence that screamed all that was good about bringing the stories into the modern age and of course Amanda Abbington as the love of John Watson’s life.
To define Benedict Cumberbatch as perhaps the conclusive Sherlock Holmes is one that could cause arguments up and down the country but surely the four main people that make the series what it is, the aforementioned Mr. Cumberbatch, the excellent Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves as D.I. Lestrade and Mark Gatiss as Mycroft Holmes, are amongst the best that you could ever hope to see in one place.
Ian D. Hall