Elementary, my dear WordGeek

[word_geek]

Thanks to Netflix, I've recently watched all three available episodes of the BBC's new Sherlock, written by Doctor Who writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis. If you haven't heard yet, it's Sherlock Holmes stories set in the modern day, meaning that Holmes uses the Internet a lot to find out information -- for example, when doing the traditional

Comments

[mmaresca]

The first one has a lot of ties to "A Study in Scarlet" (save spending half the time with the backstory of a Mormon revenge plot).

I did like how they set things up so you thought someone was Moriarty in the first episode, and it turned out to be Mycroft. That was clever.

Aspects of Moriarty worked for me. In a lot of ways, he played out much like I envisioned how The Riddler could work in Nolan's Batmanverse. I thought it worked to have him be this guy who, as a kid, killed another kid and totally got away with it-- save some other clever kid who saw something was wrong, but no one listened to. And of course he would be obsessed with that clever kid.

[word_geek]

That was the one other thing I figured out pretty early -- that Mycroft was a red herring. Dirty pool having him identify himself as Sherlock's "arch-enemy," when he clearly isn't, but the way he was behaving didn't seem consistent with Moriarty. Plus, I recognized Mark Gattis, and figured he'd be a much more likely choice as Mycroft than Moriarty, and from there it became clear.

I agree with your observations about Moriarty, though...I didn't think it through far enough to conclude that he'd been obsessed with Holmes since they were both kids (I figured that Holmes' attempt to intervene in the case as a child wasn't known to anyone). But if you connect those dots, then yes, Moriarty's "game" becomes a heck of a lot creepier. Doesn't explain the weirdness with his voice, though.

[hells_satans]

1) Loved them.

2) I always think of him as the writer for 'Coupling,' the best sitcom on-air since Seinfeld. Since the seasons are like 6 episodes, you should very definitely watch them if you haven't seen them before. Definitely see some familiar BBC faces also, I would guess.

[hells_satans]

On a similar yet totally different note, also check out the recent Aurelio Zen mysteries on PBS. Fantastic, also done by the Brits [but set in Rome and also filmed there]