Rent Sherlock: Series 3 (2014)

He's not QUITE dead... - Sherlock: Series 3 review by Count Otto Black

It's sometimes said of the original Sherlock Holmes that, although he didn't die at the Reichenbach Falls, he wasn't quite the same man afterwards. Something similar appears to be going on here. Just as the new "Doctor Who", in a desperate attempt to appeal to absolutely everybody and therefore be universally marketable, is sometimes so busy being a slightly gay soap opera that it almost forgets to include any of those evil scary space monsters it was supposed to be all about in the first place, "Sherlock" (which, oddly enough, is written by some of the people responsible for the new "Doctor Who") has to be sort of like Bourne and Bond and Batman (though thankfully Series 3 has less of that last) because, as kids and kidults would say, that's awesome. But at the same time, it has to be all about love and heartbreak and difficult friendships so girls will watch it too. And plenty of comedy to stop the kiddies getting bored. Oh yeah, and PS, maybe Sherlock should solve a crime or two when he has a moment to spare from all that other stuff?

Series 3 opens with a straight lift from "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" because these days Sherlock doesn't get out of bed for anything less than a vast international conspiracy to nuke London, apart from those wacky cases involving sad, stupid people that seem to be comedy interludes until, by an amazing coincidence, they turn out to be somehow connected with whatever billion-buck mega-heist the Hooded Claw is planning this week. How did he survive his obviously unsurvivable death leap at the end of Series 2? There's no good answer to that, so we get a few deliberately bad ones, and the supposedly "real" explanation is lampshaded by the unimportant comedy character to whom it's given pointing out how absurdly overcomplicated it is, but his perfectly valid objections aren't answered, so that might have been a lie too.

And then we're off on some ridiculous romp involving nods to "V For Vendetta", and an international terrorist who appears to have no motive at all because blaming anybody the slightest bit plausible might affect sales in some territories. And we get lots and lots of annoyingly gimmicky camerawork to make it look like a generic modern action thriller, while hopefully disguising the fact that not a lot is actually happening. About two-thirds of this entire series is about Watson's wedding, and the ludicrously implausible complications that arise therefrom (promising that future series will be even more gimmicky and Bournesque). Only in the last episode do we get the expected amount of proper Sherlock Holmes action, and it's all muddled up with silly spy stuff heavily referencing yet another popular movie. Everybody else seems to love the rebooted Holmes 2.0, but I'm rapidly losing interest.

By the way, the fate of a certain supervillain who makes Jar Jar Binks almost seem bearable remains unclear, but even if he really is dead, it looks as though we won't ever be allowed to forget him...

Great leading actors - Sherlock: Series 3 review by JD

Pretty much all the acting is good but Freeman and Cumberbatch are fantastic. I could watch them all day. The part of the plot which centres on detective skills is pretty good though the effect of words floating around is a bit strange. The rest of the plot is not great. I hope the actors do more and the writers and directors less.