To sum it up I can only echo Sherlock’s own closing words to Henry: “This case, thank you, it’s been brilliant”. The “mind palace” sequence was like a calling card for the series’ now-characteristic floating text and gymnastic camerawork.Īll that, and I haven’t even had time to mention the nodding dogs, the harpoon, the polygamist café owner, the Cluedo gag, the tantalising Moriarty cell scenes, or just how good Benedict Cumberbatch is with those mile-a-minute monologues. The stylish hand of director Paul McGuigan was in evidence once again, with beautiful establishing shots of Dartmoor and fast-edit glimpses into Holmes’s deductive process. Arnold and Price’s elegant music came to the fore wonderfully in the largely wordless scenes of Watson and Henry’s fearful hallucinations. Just as you’d expect from horror aficionado Mark Gatiss, the episode was well-schooled in the genre, with plenty of freaking out and jumping at shadows. The hints, as they are in any decent mystery, were planted from the get-go. The tour guide exclaims early on “God knows what they’ve been spraying on us all these years”, while Dr Frankland is first seen wearing a gas mask and given the very apt line that he’d love to tell Sherlock about his experiments, but if he did, he’d have to kill him. You don’t need to know a thing about the source material though, to enjoy a spot of deduction and puzzling. ![]() This may be pushing it, but could the barman’s description of Dartmoor’s legendary hound as being like “having our own Loch Ness monster” be a continuation of episode 2.1’s run of nods to Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes? Yes or no, that the show is the work of true fans of the Holmes canon was never more evident. Even escaped convict Selden, chopped from this version of the tale, gets a cheeky namesake spotted briefly by Watson through a car window… Familiar character names all showed up in different guises from Frankland to Stapleton and Dr Mortimer. Other joyful moments for Conan Doyle fans came, as ever, from tracing elements of the original story. His barbed remark about Sherlock posing with his coat collar turned up was delicious, as was the Spock reference, the show’s first actual utterance of the word Asperger’s, and Watson’s insistence – uttered to Sherlock Holmes remember – that “we have to be rational about this.” Joyful stuff. Watson hasn’t just been given more agency in the new Sherlock, but a wicked tongue and some of the best lines to boot. ![]() Watson may have been led down the garden path by the dogging signals – a great gag, that – and by Holmes’ own unethical experiment on him, but he proves his worth pulling rank in the improvised spot-check at Baskerville, and playing good cop to Holmes’ strung out bad cop in the opening scene with Knight. The military compound was the setting for some well-crafted and tense scenes as Sherlock exploited both his family connections and his friendship with Watson in the name of investigation. Tovey’s so recognisable for his role as Being Human’s George that some may have feared his presence would prove a distraction in Sherlock, but seconds into Henry’s meeting with Holmes and Watson, any apprehension vanishes.Īnother recognisable property was transformed in the episode, as Baskerville Hall was reinvented as the mysterious Baskerville chemical and biological weapons research facility. ![]() The wonderful Russell Tovey joins the cast in the Sir Henry role (or Henry Knight in this version), a man who’d already lost his father and who arrives at Sherlock’s door on the brink of losing his mind. It’s a belter of a job, and a worthy follow-up to A Scandal in Belgravia. Gatiss’ Baskerville script takes a hammer to Conan Doyle’s story, sending shards of character and plot flying, then reassembling them into a neatly constructed mosaic.įormer red herrings become villains, former villains become red herrings, and a whole subplot leads only to a saucy punch line that must have proved irresistible to a writer with canines on their mind. Episode 2.2 serves up a psychological horror that gives good scare before revealing its supernatural hound to have a very real-world provenance. With adroit plotting, sneaky inversions, excellent grounding in source and genre, and a delicious sense of mischief comes Gatiss’ answer in the form of The Hounds of Baskerville.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |