How often does an episode of a television show make you just drop your jaw in awe? Like, honestly, how many times has it happened? I’m not talking giddy giggling as the show works within its own writing incredibly well, or some on screen chemistry just clicks in that very special way – I mean you’re just speechless and you get reminded how absolutely ingenious that show is, and it becomes an episode you’d show people to say ‘LOOK, LOOK AT THE AWESOME, AHHHHH!!!’ when you finally convince them to give it a go. It’s rare, in all forms of television, it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it feels a little bit like an event.
That’s what Sunday’s Sherlock was. Going into the episode, I didn’t know what to expect at all. I thought I’d like it, but since it’s the middle episode, I figured it hold a punch or two. Nope, not even a little bit.
Taking place entirely at one Dr. John H. Watson’s wedding to Mary Morstan, ‘The Sign of Three’ shows Sherlock in his most lacking area – being a person. He’s been given the role of Best Man, and he is slowly writhing and fidgeting his way into the role while also having to try and swallow the idea that after the wedding, things are going to be different. There’s a quality ninety minutes of entertainment in watching John just about keep Sherlock out of trouble at the wedding while the two solve a crime taking place at the wedding, but that would have been easy writing.
Instead, we get an ingenious clip show of sorts showing the events leading up to the wedding, interspersed with an awkward, but altogether emotional speech from Sherlock as he recounts his favourite memories with John, which of course include some very memorable cases. It’s altogether delightful, and altogether enlightening and endearing to the characters and how close they are as people, and how much they truly need each other.
Pacing comedy well with drama can be difficult, especially when it’s obvious the power-play is the comedy aspects, but its execution here is totally on point, and at a pivotal moment the two are even brought together seamlessly. If ever you needed a justifiably infallible reason why Mark Gatiss is an astounding writer and Sherlock is one of the best shows on television, this is it.
Sherlock as a show has always had a great ability of making you giggle one second and gasp the next, the episodes are ninety minutes, and they need ebb and flow. Watson and Sherlock are easy fodder for awkward situations followed by momentous victory by the thinnest of margins. We’re used to them arguing, and then solving the case, and then laughing together before having another argument. Here, the formula is a little bit different, but it’s perfect. You’re laughing but at the right moment you’re stopped and you’re wondering what’s happening and whose dying, and why they’re dying, and then you’re laughing again and then you’re in suspense again.
It doesn’t get old, despite the all-go feel of the episode, and that’s a credit to the cast and crew involved. Every long-term cast member (the highlights being Amanda Abbington, if she doesn’t get a co-star award nod I will eat my hat!) is on screen consistently, and they and the one-shot extras are on the finest of form. No-one lets the pace down or removes us from the action on screen. Gatiss knows the elementary (huh huh) parts to the engine of the series and he marries the satirical with the serious very, very nicely, and no-one has any trouble changing with the form and tone as he has written it.
If you’re not already watching Sherlock, you really should be. Usually when I get excited about a TV show, and I do quite often as I’m an excitable person like that, the excitement is saturated in nerding out about the sci-fi ridiculousness or the fantastical horrors at work, but with Sherlock, it’s genuinely one of the best things on television right now. In fact, it’s one of the best in recent times. A show this tightly written, casted, performed, constructed and developed does not come around very often.
How many shows do you know can leave for two years, on a cliff-hanger, and still deliver the goods without batting an eyelid or losing its fan base in the meantime?
Yeah, not many! Get watching!
