Not elementary enough, Doctor Watson

Yesterday after my evening meal (having recorded the same on Sunday) and because Monday is worst night of the week for television I watched the third and final episode of the BBC drama’s blockbuster Sherlock’s fourth series.

By now most UK viewers will know that this incarnation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s eponymous and legendary detective was created and for the most part written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor John Watson. The shows have been made in series of three episodes, beginning in 2010. To date have been thirteen in all, including a one-off special aired on 1^st January 2016 [it says here on Wikipedia] and in one form or another the series has been nominated for umpteen awards including BAFTAs, Emmy and a Golden Globe. And been sold to over 180 countries including China where an average of 69 million television fans watched every episode of Series 3.

According to the Guinness Book Of World Records Sherlock Holmes is the ‘most portrayed movie character in history’, having to date been played by over 70 different actors in more than 200 films and there are appreciation societies that have been in existence for over a century, some of which operate on the basis that Holmes and Watson are not fictional but real-life characters.

Though those of Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett are perhaps regarded as the quintessential performances of the role of Sherlock, in recent times Robert Downey Jnr has starred in two very successful Sherlock Holmes movies and – these both set in modern times – Cumberbatch’s television version and that of Jonny Lee Miller in Elementary, CBS’s take on the character (first aired in 2012) have also been acclaimed as outstanding.

Cumberbatch’s Sherlock has been characterised by its production values, the brilliance of the ensemble’s acting and the cleverness of the scripts and story-lines. To be fair to those involved, most particularly Moffat and Gatiss, in the gaps between the series (at times caused by the hectic nature of the lead actor’s schedules – both Cumberbatch and Freeman have since become Hollywood movie superstars on the back of their Sherlock outings) they have worked diligently to maintain the quality and develop the characterisations and stories.

Perhaps they have worked a little too hard.

This fourth series has been controversial. Some media pundits and viewers have criticised it for ‘going too far’, i.e. having virtually disappeared up its own fundament with its naked attempts to devise ever-more-complicated plots, twists and surprises with which to confuse, shock (and hopefully delight?) its millions of fans and viewers.

In the mad, bad television and movie industries it is an axiomatic fact of life that audience ratings – in movie terms, bums on seats and ‘box office totals’ – matter more than anything else.

It would seem, based upon the latest UK television audience figures that some of Sherlock’s current critics may be on to something.

On New Year’s Day some 8.1 million viewers tuned in for the first episode but only 5.9 million had stuck around to see last Sunday’s supposedly climatic finale, a figure that was bettered by BBC1 staple Sunday evening offerings Countryfile and Antiques Road Show. Admittedly – as the BBC press department has pointed out – Sherlock traditionally airs at 9.00pm (technically after what in my day used to be called ‘peak time’) and those two aforementioned shows go out earlier in the evening, and there may be something in the suggestion that a sizeable proportion of viewers may have (like me) either recorded the series, or else watched it via other ‘catch up’ television facilities, which could add up to another million to the figures.

Even so, the 2014 series (who can ever forget the speculation surrounding how Holmes might have survived his ‘suicide’ fall from the top of a building at the denouement of the previous series?) was watched by almost 13 million UK viewers.

That’s quite a comedown.

Has Cumberbatch’s Sherlock or – God forbid, even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s – now shot his bolt?

Has interest in Sherlock Holmes reached some sort of high tide water mark or saturation point from which there is no other way but down?

Personally, I doubt it.

From my perspective on this occasion it is simply a case of the majority of the critics getting it right – as we do sometimes, you know!

I always come to any Sherlock Holmes interpretation full of anticipation and hope. There’s something in the uniqueness of the flawed character – his steely cold aloofness, the brilliance of his detective powers, the violin-playing, the drug use, the seemingly sociopathic tendencies, the absence of worldliness and even yes, his apparent lack of interest in either women or human emotions – that make him strangely attractive in that manner that ‘what you cannot have’ sometimes can.

Not many would describe Cumberbatch as classically handsome, myself included, and yet his ‘possession’ of the role and acting ability can verge upon the irresistible. Not that I’d go as far as to claim membership of that group of females styling themselves ‘Cumberbitches’, mind!

This is how I see things. The advance publicity for Series Four foretold of Sherlock this time going to stranger and deeper, darker, places than ever before. This should have been taken as a warning sign.

I’m all for experimentation and development. I’d never require my Holmes and Watson to be stuck in some standard low-key, gentle Midsummer Murders, Father Brown, Columbo, Mrs Marple or cod-Agatha Christie genre parlour game detective ‘Who-dunnit’ vehicle produced by the yard, without much effort and with the creative dial set to ‘auto-pilot’.

But, right from the off during Series Four, I had a sense of foreboding. It was as if the airship Graf Zeppelin that is the BBC’s latest Sherlock Holmes project had been suddenly cut from its moorings and – like a party balloon – had spiralled and zizzled around in the sky like a mad thing until the air inside it ran out.

Suddenly, instead of Sherlock being grounded in his dingy flat in Baker Street, taking on and solving cases brought to him by a series of unfortunates in need of rescuing, it was as if Moffat and Gatiss – perhaps getting ahead of themselves, rendered giddy by the global audience now hooked on their creation, or maybe just responding to BBC orders – had decided to morph Sherlock into some sort of Marvel Comics’ superhero who was going to swoosh across the world, smashing villains and baddies. Presumably (the plan is) next stop a billing alongside Batman, Spiderman and Captain America in the latest manifestation of a Hollywood superhero movie franchise and maybe several hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of profits – rather than simply the hundreds of thousands that even an expensive and high quality globally-successful BBC television series could bring.

Frankly, I watched Series Four in a state of semi-detachment. It didn’t engage me because it was more Doctor Who than Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.

Well, my Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson anyway.

Sorry.