There is a scene in the second episode of the first season in Sherlock, where the genius himself asks Dr Watson to shut his eyes and recollect something visual. He is in a hurry as he says there is only so much that a normal human brain can retain. To this, Watson says that he remembers all of the complicated graphiti perfectly. Sherlock is taken aback-how is it possible for someone like Watson to store in his memory a complex cipher? Watson takes out his mobile phone, explaining that he had taken a picture. Here lies the brilliance of a modern retelling of Sherlock-all of us who know the traditional ways how Sherlock and Dr Watson worked, has changed with time. Is it for the better? I would not like to delve too much into that, but it sure as hell makes from some very gripping and addictive shows.
Benedict Cumberbatch is Sherlock Holmes, the “consultant” detective who lives on 221 B Baker Street. He is the only such consultant detective as he is the one who invented the job. But I doubt if anyone else was to know about this, they would match up to the brilliance of this man. At times I am reminded of one of our favourite nerds Sheldon Cooper by looking at Sherlock-but there is just something so simple yet so brilliant about this show, that I soon curse that comparison made by my own self. There are a lot of factors that really work for this modern retelling of Sherlock-the first being that it really is a modern retelling. Yes, every gadget is used in a sensible manner, and not in a way which the audience will not be able to grasp.
Another thing that really works for the show is Martin Freeman as Dr Watson. Having just returned from a war, Sherlock and Dr Watson are introduced to each other by the mere prospect of them being potential future room-mates. What is interesting in the first few minutes of the show is that Watson has no idea about what sort of a man Sherlock is at the start, but Sherlock has already understood some very personal things about Watson-even though one of it does turn out to be an understandable yet unexpected mistake.
The music used in the show is well chosen as well, creating just the right mood of suspense and tension. Honestly speaking, I have just started watching Sherlock, and since I had really not seen something good for quite some time and had more time than I had wished for, I started off with Sherlock. And just one episode into the show, I was so pumped about it, that I finished an entire season the very same day. Which gets me to my next point that Sherlock is not like other Television shows which we are familiar with-it has three episodes in every season(or series, which is apparently the term used by the English), and there are three seasons which have already been aired as of now. So you could choose to watch each episode as a movie, as the run time for each episode is a well edited and very tense 90 minutes.
Now you might ask why am I writing about Sherlock so late, when almost a majority of the people have already watched it? The answer is simple-since there were so many people watching the show, my personal opinion was that the show was primarily a crowd pleaser and not a brain racker. This opinion was formed also partly because I had seen the last two Sherlock Holmes movies which were directed by Guy Ritchie and starred Robert Downey Jr in the title role-and both these movies were more of style than substance. So I really was not that keen on watching Sherlock. But now I realise how wrong I was-and I definitely need to apologise to that small inner self in me that was begging to at least give the show one shot. And I know that there are many out there like me, who have not seen the show from similar reasons, if the not the same one. But trust me, buy into the hype and give the first episode a watch-and let the binge watching begin.
