Spoiler Free TV Review – Sherlock: The Blind Banker

The second installment of Sherlock brings something I hadn’t previously noticed was missing in the first by giving Martin Freeman, as Dr. John Watson, some rather light and sometimes funny character moments. It’s welcome to see Freeman working these kinds of scenes, because he’s most definitely good with them.

Sherlock himself gets a small character adjustment too – this time around he has a few fights and gets to show off his prowess in scrapping. It’s not entirely the kind of thing we were lumped with in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, but it does underwhelm. Instead of some conflicts being resolved by Sherlock’s powers of deduction, they’re tossed aside with a little fight scene. Surely that’s counter to the appeal of the basic premise here?

Actually, from the very top, the show feels a little different to before and somewhat more “normal”. There’s even a “crime of the week” opening tease that reminds of very many other mystery shows. Within minutes I was feeling quite sceptical. Was this episode going to derail the entire flow of the series for me?

Well… it certainly came close, here and there, and my overall enthusiasm for the show is definitely somewhat dented now. But that has pretty much always been the way with serial television – you win some, you lose some, and you’d be nuts to predict an all-out duff hand on the turn of a single bad card. There’s another episode next week, and it’s written by Mark Gatiss, one of the show’s creators who should, really, be walking more in line with the first episode’s intricacy and delicacy of structure, and hopefully also its quality.

It’s not hard to speculate that this second episode was just filler, from a writer and director – Stephen Thompson and Euros Lyn – who are neither involved in the premiere episode nor the last, perhaps a B-team able to produce an episode on a budget. There were some stylistic echoes of the first episode, with that blessed text on screen again and more of those rapid cut “deduction moments as well as a similar look to the cinematography, but overall, it seemed less polished and – dare I say it – somewhat cheaper. I wasn’t a fan of all of the stylistic and storytelling choices director Paul McGuigan made last time around but he definitely had a more sure grip than Euro Lyn is showing here.

This episode is also rather divorced from all of the work on a developing story arc that was done in the first: there’s no Mycroft; there’s only the most tacked-on of references to Moriarty – placed exactly where it doesn’t have to actually integrate with the plot in any meaningful way; Inspector Lestrade is absent, as well as his supporting cast of Sherlock-skeptical officers. I would expect to see all of the above reversed in the third installment, further confirming the filler status of Part Two.

Looking at this episode as a pure standalone, it still disappoints. The script commits some cardinal sins for a murder mystery: for one thing, there’s a good handful of coincidences scattered about to make the plot work; for another, there’s moments where the penny suddenly drops for our favourite Consulting Detective when, in fact, there’s not really been a huge shift in the information at his disposal. In a few cases, the new clue that is spurring him on is just something out of nothing. Throughout this episode, Sherlock’s intelligence and attentiveness seem rather flexible and there’s even a few scenes where other people do his thinking for him, others where the audience surely must be shouting at the screen. It doesn’t sit easy that some of what Sherlock misses seems so blindingly obvious.

There is still some fun to be had. A late twist with Dr. Watson’s wallet is a tad forced but at least reveals how some set-up was hidden in plain sight – even if it’s set-up for not much at all. There’s some gags that work far better than most of those in the first installment and Cumberbatch and Freeman are as good now as they were before, even in the face of weaker writing.

I might cynically surmise that the show’s producers were simply trying to tread water with this episode, but that’s not good enough. I’m looking to the series finale to bring back the ambition and detail.