It's not a bona fide rug-pull, but Sherlock does at least sway the mat with uncanny clandestine experiments and terrifying childhood traumas completely taking the place of the previous episode's light-hearted humour in "The Hounds of Baskerville". Moreover, this one establishes its main plot after only five minutes and, if you ignore the forced quarrel between Sherlock and John, stays fully focused on it for the remaining time, whereas "A Scandal in Belgravia" made its central storyline rather hard to pick out for quite a while. In essence, there's a plethora of differences between these two episodes and the all- important one resides in their quality.
I'm earnestly begging for this not to become a practice, but as yet, the monumental brilliance exhibited by Sherlock in the first and final episode of its series has, at the halfway point, consistently made room for a run-of-the-mill detective story with some of its title role's quirks added to the recipe. Remember "The Blind Banker"? That was precisely the same type of let-down, plainly above average when compared to all the rest that can be discovered on television, yet a potentially fatal drop in form for this programme. For all I know, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss used "The Hounds of Baskerville" to find out if an eerie and sombre atmosphere suited Sherlock - and, as it happens, the two and director Paul McGuigan succeeded in conjuring up some frights. The issues with this episode aren't in its style, however, but in Gatiss' script, to which he admits clichés (does the unknown friendly bloke showing up in the beginning always have to be the culprit?) instead of jokes or more than one individual trait for each of the newly introduced characters. Particularly Russell Tovey, portraying Sherlock's 'client' Henry, is badly off; his apparently not having paid the BBC licence fee leads him to be furnished with no more than alternately looking traumatised, screaming 'Oh God!', and threatening suicide.
Having vented all of these criticisms, a lot of positive attributes about "The Hounds of Baskerville" remain, first and foremost, how Gatiss and Moffat modified Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel to conform to this day and age, and how McGuigan realised it more chilling than anyone before him. As always, there's also some praise belonging to Sherlock's main acting cast, most of all Martin Freeman, who in this instalment proves to have performing flair outside the realms of comedy in a scene that sees him hiding in a cage. Along with the aforementioned suspense that surprisingly works, "The Hounds of Baskerville" are gripping 90 minutes despite being a second-rate Sherlock episode.
My detective scribblings: "I can tell from the angle she wrote at that she was sat across from you." – Or, he just handed her the napkin and she turned it around. I believe that would have been possible, Sherlock. There's a glaring lack of humour in this episode, but that one scene of Sherlock reacting to Henry's puffing on a cigarette by coming closer to him and inhaling the smoke just about makes up for all of that. "If I wanted poetry, I'd read John's emails to his girlfriends, much funnier." – I was just about to complain about Henry's stilted way of talking, but apparently, Mark Gatiss knew what sort of dialogue he was giving him and hence came up with this amusing piece of self- deprecation. "Thank you for smoking." – Cue Aaron Eckhart. Let's not overuse the 'outwardly insignificant case being turned down but later transpiring to be connected to the main story' thing, shall we, Sherlock? The ideal Christmas present for John would be "Behaviour in sinister places for dummies" and he could give "Noticing someone has left the group for dummies" to Sherlock and Henry as one. Hopefully, Sherlock's 'mind palace' will be incorporated some time again because that looked fairly impressive in this episode. So, you're telling me that for high-security intelligence, a major's password would be the six-letter sobriquet of a person with whom he has frequently had contact? "BULLS***" would have been a better choice, if you ask me. Best line(s) of dialogue: it's far too much to type down here, but Sherlock proving his abilities on 'the sentimental widow and her son' in the restaurant right after having seen the hound for the first time was fairly fantastic.
I'm earnestly begging for this not to become a practice, but as yet, the monumental brilliance exhibited by Sherlock in the first and final episode of its series has, at the halfway point, consistently made room for a run-of-the-mill detective story with some of its title role's quirks added to the recipe. Remember "The Blind Banker"? That was precisely the same type of let-down, plainly above average when compared to all the rest that can be discovered on television, yet a potentially fatal drop in form for this programme. For all I know, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss used "The Hounds of Baskerville" to find out if an eerie and sombre atmosphere suited Sherlock - and, as it happens, the two and director Paul McGuigan succeeded in conjuring up some frights. The issues with this episode aren't in its style, however, but in Gatiss' script, to which he admits clichés (does the unknown friendly bloke showing up in the beginning always have to be the culprit?) instead of jokes or more than one individual trait for each of the newly introduced characters. Particularly Russell Tovey, portraying Sherlock's 'client' Henry, is badly off; his apparently not having paid the BBC licence fee leads him to be furnished with no more than alternately looking traumatised, screaming 'Oh God!', and threatening suicide.
Having vented all of these criticisms, a lot of positive attributes about "The Hounds of Baskerville" remain, first and foremost, how Gatiss and Moffat modified Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel to conform to this day and age, and how McGuigan realised it more chilling than anyone before him. As always, there's also some praise belonging to Sherlock's main acting cast, most of all Martin Freeman, who in this instalment proves to have performing flair outside the realms of comedy in a scene that sees him hiding in a cage. Along with the aforementioned suspense that surprisingly works, "The Hounds of Baskerville" are gripping 90 minutes despite being a second-rate Sherlock episode.
My detective scribblings: "I can tell from the angle she wrote at that she was sat across from you." – Or, he just handed her the napkin and she turned it around. I believe that would have been possible, Sherlock. There's a glaring lack of humour in this episode, but that one scene of Sherlock reacting to Henry's puffing on a cigarette by coming closer to him and inhaling the smoke just about makes up for all of that. "If I wanted poetry, I'd read John's emails to his girlfriends, much funnier." – I was just about to complain about Henry's stilted way of talking, but apparently, Mark Gatiss knew what sort of dialogue he was giving him and hence came up with this amusing piece of self- deprecation. "Thank you for smoking." – Cue Aaron Eckhart. Let's not overuse the 'outwardly insignificant case being turned down but later transpiring to be connected to the main story' thing, shall we, Sherlock? The ideal Christmas present for John would be "Behaviour in sinister places for dummies" and he could give "Noticing someone has left the group for dummies" to Sherlock and Henry as one. Hopefully, Sherlock's 'mind palace' will be incorporated some time again because that looked fairly impressive in this episode. So, you're telling me that for high-security intelligence, a major's password would be the six-letter sobriquet of a person with whom he has frequently had contact? "BULLS***" would have been a better choice, if you ask me. Best line(s) of dialogue: it's far too much to type down here, but Sherlock proving his abilities on 'the sentimental widow and her son' in the restaurant right after having seen the hound for the first time was fairly fantastic.