TV Review – Steven Moffat’s Sherlock: A Study in Pink

Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat have together re-created Sherlock Holmes for a new BBC/PBS co-produced TV series called, simply, Sherlock. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, Martin Freeman as his associate Dr. Watson and Rupert Graves as Inspector Lestrade. Should other key figures from the stories up… well, it’s not for me to spoil that now. Let’s just say there’s a cameo or two.

The big idea this time is that this is Holmes is living in the present day, free of any of the period trappings and tropes that seem to have so distracted other tellers of these tales. I’m sure, thought, that we’ve met so many versions of Holmes and we know him so well that it’s not the big idea this show is ultimately going to stand or fall on. It’s the small ones.

Thankfully, most of the small ideas are wonderful. On paper, this is as good a retelling of Sherlock Holmes as I would reasonably expect. It’s tightly plotted – of course it is, this is Moffat doing Conan Doyle – and full of zippy dialogue that deftly shades the characters even as it’s whipping up laughs. Crucially, the script also manages to plant the leaps of deduction on the right side of implausible while still deep into the improbable.

There are some disappointments, many of them in the look of the thing. This Holmes absolutely loves mobile phones and text messaging. In several sequences the screen is covered in subtitle-style text showing us the messages being sent or received. Indeed, in the first instance we see several phones all receiving the same message at the same time, the legend “Wrong!” rising from each in unison. This might be a pretty economical way of avoiding endless cut-aways to cellphone screens, but it is inherently distancing and will, I think, date rather badly. Score one against director Paul McGuigan.

There’s a lot of artificially defocussed images too, where part of the screen has been fed through a post production filter. At best this is a little off-putting, at worst it is ugly and quite irritating. See also: some curiously forced compositions (see Watson’s therapist before the opening titles for a particularly stressed example) and a few quick-cut deduction sequences that just seem silly.

It’s hard to visualise Holmes’ brilliance and rat-a-tat thought processes. So hard, in fact, that I’d advise directors never to even try. It’s in his head, so leave it there where it belongs. If you show us the clues that Holmes sees and the outcome of his deductions, we’ll both keep up and remain enthralled. Thoughts can’t be photographed, they can only be implied through editing, actions and dialogue. Where this show comes unstuck is in trying to go beyond implication into some kind of expressionistic realisation. We’re served up the workings of subtle mind, disappointingly rendered without subtlety.

Understandably, many of the plot points in A Study in Pink are the same as in Conan Doyle’s first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet but the overall shape is different in many important respects. Moffat is clearly very interested in setting up a larger narrative arc than this one story can contain, weaving in set-up and hints throughout. He’s aided in this by having had the whole Holmes pantehon completed and laid out for him before he even began, but nonetheless, he’s managed to tell both a self contained story and allude to a larger one quite superbly.

Maybe it’s even more impressive, seeing as this is, of sorts, an origin story too. As we begin, Dr. Watson has yet to meet Holmes, and in the very last seconds it is stressed that they are now a team and that, from here on out, we’re properly up and running. Sensibly, Watson is our protagonist throughout, though the structure is adroitly cheated a little here and there to allow focus on Holmes instead when it most counts.

We do have another modern Holmes on TV, if more loosely adapted, in the form of Gregory House MD. The creators of his show decided to foreground the character’s drug problems while Moffat and Gatiss have, at least thus far, allowed it to remain almost entirely hidden – present, but only just. The character’s other addictions, to unusual mysteries and the thrill of the chase, are as prominent and openly acknowledged here as they are in the medical show. As yet, this Holmes has only threatened to play the violin and has yet to pick it up.

As with the best of mysteries, the clues are laid out very openly, even brazenly. If I were to draw your attention to them, however, I’d be spoiling the fun. To get the best out of this one, record it and start again at the beginning when it’s all over and you’ll see that, even in the opening scenes, key clues drift by almost invisibly. Familiarity with A Study in Scarlet will help you solve the mystery to a very large degree, but the meanings of some very famous bits and pieces have been shifted hugely.

There’s two more feature length episodes to come in this series, neither of them written by Moffat. I’m curious to see how Stephen Thompson’s reinvention of The Adventure of the Dancing Men plays out next week, before we finish with an episode written by co-creator Mark Gatiss. The middle episode has been directed by Dr. Who veteran Euros Lyn, and it remains to be seen if he’s more restrained than Paul McGuigan.

A Study in Pink airs on BBC One in the UK this Sunday at 9pm; the US premiere is set for October 24th. You may wish to try and stay spoiler free.