The Cutprice Guignol

It’s been a few years since Sherlock finally blessed us with its absence, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not a bit mad about it. It feels like we’re only just starting to recover from the plague of Sherlock-style leading man – calculating, socially inept, and dryly funny (just like my cat, actually) – and I’m glad to leave him behind for good. What started as a pretty entertaining modern spin on the classic Arthur Conan Doyle stories turned into some of the most convoluted, cold, and, unfortunately, influential pieces of media to come out of the 2010s. Adapted by Mark Gatiss and my close personal nemesis Steven Moffat and starring Benedict Cumberatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson respectively, it was pretty much inescapable for a while – at least until a notoriously terrible ending tanked the goodwill it had managed to build up, anyway.

I am not well-known for my ability to let sleeping dogs lie, though. And, with Sherlock only being thirteen episodes long, it seemed right to rank them in some way. When I think of Sherlock, I think of annoyance – I think of being irritated on some level, by the smug writing, convoluted plots, treatment of women, wasted guest stars, the lot. So that’s how I’m ranking them: from least to most in terms of What Really Put My Teeth on Edge. To the list!

13. A Study in Pink

Is the first episode of Sherlock the best? Yeah, probably. The novelty is still fresh, and the modern re-interpretation of the story is a relatively un-annoying approach in terms of cloying over-complication (unlike this sentence). I remember seeing this when it came out and being so excited about what this show had to offer – it’s just really solid, and I can still watch this now and enjoy it as long as I don’t think too hard about what’s to come.

12. The Reichenbach Fall

This episode is Slightly Annoying, just for how self-satisfied it is, but there’s a reason, you know? Andrew Scott is the best thing in the world as Moriarty, and it’s probably the best finale the show ever pulled off. In some ways, it’s so good, I don’t think the show ever recovered from it, as we’ll get into.

11. The Sign of Three

Now, I know a lot of people really don’t like this episode, but I think it’s pretty fun – the goofy best man speech framework lubricates the plot-wheels here, and the actual mystery is one of the more fun stories from the show. Plus, I feel a deep and abiding sense of connection to anyone fucking up at an important public event.

10. The Great Game

I still remember how exciting Andrew Scott’s first real turn as Moriarty was when it came out, and his sheer commitment to the bit helps paper over any cracks in this episode. It’s great fun to see Scott and Cumberbatch come up against each other like this, and Stephen Moffat does know his way around an introduction to an iconic villain.

9. The Blind Banker

Okay, we’re getting into irritating territory here for me: the waste of Zoe Telford on damsel duties is so typical of a lot of Stephen Moffat’s work, and the weird Orientalism angle has not aged well, even if the central mystery is a lot of fun. One of the best things the shows had going for it was the chemistry between Freeman and Cumberbatch in the early seasons, and this episode is a particularly great example of that.

8. The Hounds of Baskerville

Ugh, I can still recall how let down I was by this episode when it came out. I love this story – who doesn’t – and this take on it is clever, but also pretty annoying. Despite Russel Tovey putting in a shift, the story has that big stupid best-friend-break-up sequence that slows it all down, and Sherlock himself is almost unwatchably unlikeable. I wanted to huff some of that magic giallo horror gas by the end of this, let me tell you.

7. The Empty Hearse

This episode was doomed from day one, because it followed such a great cliffhanger. I honestly don’t think there’s any explanation the show could have tossed out that would have actually felt satisfying, but the one we got still falls flat (unlike Sherlock himself, who twanged off a mini trampoline placed strategically on the street below or something. At the end of the day, there’s an inescapable sense of “…oh, this was it?”. Maybe not annoying as much as it is a victim of its own set-up, but The Empty Hearse still makes me roll my eyes (if only for that ridiculous and overlong fantasy opening sequence alone. Oh, and the French waiter thing. That too).

6. His Last Vow

I think this was the episode where, for me, the show tipped over into a completely lost cause. The stupid cliff-hanger ending, the over-writing, the enduring tone of smugness draped over the whole thing, the writing out of a female character who was in the story this was based off – it’s trying so hard, and the strain is starting to show. I was also really let down by Lars Mikklesen here – I know a lot of people love the performance, but it’s contained to the point of being sanded down to nothingness for me.

5. The Lying Detective

The only thing keeping this episode out of a higher spot on this list is Toby Jones; he’s like a balm on the bad rash of this appalling opening to the fourth season. Everything else, though? I just cannot stand it. PMD (Post Mary Death) Watson and Sherlock come across as so stilted and awkward to me in a way that doesn’t really suit the grief-stricken tone the script is going for, and the story seems too wrapped up in its own smartness and twists and turns to actually stick the emotional landing, even with the therapy throughline.

4. The Six Thatchers

I mean, where to even start with this? Mary leaving a post-death voice note for Sherlock after taking a bullet for him, the convoluted and fundamentally Not Very Interesting central plot, Sherlock’s shift into catastrophically cringe action hero territory – I can’t take it. If the strain was starting to show with the last season’s finale, it is bursting at the seams here. Sacha Dhawan is here, I guess? The convolution and condescension is dripping off this episode, and it aggravates me more than when my cat pads his dusty little litter tray paws over my freshly-cleaned floor.

3. A Scandal in Belgravia

Okay, now we’re on to episodes I can give an unprompted three-hour rant presentation on at any given moment. A Scandal in Belgravia is this high on the list not because it’s a bad episode, because it’s not – it’s one of the best in terms of storyline and execution, polished and precise. But the fuck-up Moffat and Gatiss make of Irene Adler is simply unnacceptable for me. As soon as they had her slide on to the scene fully nude I knew I was in trouble, oh, it’s part of her character, is it, that she’d be a conventionally attractive woman appearing fully nude? That’s a funny coincidence. It’s not just that, though – Adler is such a brilliant character in the stories, and I truly feel like they missed the mark on her wit and strength entirely. This is the start of many problems that would swell up to take over the show completely, even if they weren’t too apparent here. If they’d let Andrew Scott go balls to the breeze later this season, maybe I’d feel differently, but as it stands, it drives me up the wall.

2. The Final Problem

Not my final problem with the series, but a pretty big one. Sherlock’s final episode (unless you happen to be waiting for that Apple Tree Yard canon Johnlock outing after all these years) is such a spectacularly bad piece from top to bottom. Here’s a lost sister brought in at the last moment! She’s bisexual and sexually assaults people! She has all the main characters in a cutprice Saw trap but with none of the camp! John holds the same place in Sherlock’s head as a pet dog! It’s this bizarre and profoundly unpalatable mix of melodrama and above-it-all smugness, performed with all the exhausted non-commitment of an actor with one foot in the Multiverse of Madness already. It’s such a hateful episode and a genuinely awful send-off to what was once a passably entertaining slice of high-concept TV.

1. The Abomniable Bride

This is one of those episodes that almost makes me see red, you know? I mean, even from just an in-show perspective, it sucks: a feature-length special that was, need I remind you, shown in cinemas it was such a big deal, which is actually a gimmicky period piece literal fever dream of the main character that closes out with the promise that, sorry, no, that villain you loved isn’t coming back after all. It’s a big, fat, frustrating nothing of an episode, and that’s not even getting in to the – shudder – women’s suffrage subplot. The thrashing agony I feel whenever I think of Sherlock’s “it’s a war we [men] must lose” in regards to women getting the vote – depicting women advocating for their own suffrage as cult members in esoteric robes slaughtering men who’ve done them wrong? It’s hard to believe this episode wasn’t created to raise my blood pressure specifically.

Did you watch Sherlock when it was out? Did you find it as annoying as I did, or do you still love it? Let me know in the comments!

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(header image via The Independent)