That sums my feeling up too.

I'm not a Dr Who watcher, and don't have the first clue about this Moffat guy or anything, but I did notice that in interviews he describes Sherlock as 'Dr Who, but on later in the evening' and he said 'its the same audience for both'. So I guess that's who its aimed at.

ETA. Someone described it as pantomime. That sounds correct.

Sherlock was one of the few programmes I've been really looking forward to over the Christmas period, and I wasn't disappointed.

I thought it was fantastic, and I'm so glad we only have a couple of days to wait until episode 2.

Well done to all concerned, and I do hope they make some more as 3 just doesn't seem enough after such a long wait.

Yes, right up Mycroft's/Gatiss's street

That is one of the brilliant little bits that make the show so enjoyable, the Conan Doyle Sherlock and Watson little idiosyncrasies that we know from the past are given to the new characters for a short while to link the old and the new Sherlock and Watson.
Sherlocks grabs any hat to hide his face from the press. he actually hates the hat but now has to wear it to keep the media happy. Watson ridiculing the police for searching Sherlocks room for drugs while Sherlock is quietly telling him to shut up.
Now they have made the reference to Watson moustache there is no need for him to have it so rightly he has shaved it off, after all it did look awful .lol

I was thinking that the other day, it would be nice to have about 13 episodes.

But having 2 big actors who are busy making films is impossible to make that many episodes I guess.

Maybe Paul McGuigan* sp was missed in this episode

My thoughts exactly as i turned off at the bomb in the tube train.

The great Sherlock holmes , Knowing the H of P are to be blown up ....walks alone into a tunnel, into a bomb carraige , and NEVER for a moment thought ....I could be trapped here !!!!!

what an idiot. anyone who half suspected that on Nov 5th, a tube train was going to explode would NOT get themselves caught with the bomb , underground, with no mobile signal.... ( yet the bomd couyld remotely be triggered !! ) ... telling no back up in case they got stranded....DUMB DUMB DUMB.

Sherlock Holmes ????

Homer Simpson more like.

UTTER TOSH.

If I want a homo erotic rom com I will go to the DVD store.

( how long was that rescue at the bonfire ...yawn)

Oh no it isn't!

Found the episode quite funny with plenty of good quotes. The dialogue was classic but the plot wasn't up to much. The next episode looks interesting so hopefully it picks up a bit.

No I admit that I haven't seen Tumblr and the Sherlock stuff.
Really though it does seem like the show has sought out this extreme fanbase and made more of a big deal of it than it actually is.
I expect even shows The One Show have extreme fans, but I doubt that they are truly representative in any way of the population of viewers out there.

It did say that the street was closed off though didn't it so it was like a big film set?

Yes I agree that it was a brilliant sequence which showed cutaway edits to hilarious effect. I also particularly liked the one where Sherlock was asked what John's reply to him was to which they cut away to Watson in his doctor's surgery asking a patient to 'cough'.

That's exactly what I was reminded of too, V. Overall it was a good episode and I'm looking forward to the next one.

I really liked this episode; it's not been my favourite, the top two being The Great Game and A Scandal In Belgravia (yes, I liked ASiB, despite what tumblr would think of me, I'm not the devil). I think the issue with writing for sherlock is the huge fan base is going to mean one group of fans won't be impressed and another will. Similar to DW, I've seen people who love Moffats writing and people who hate it.

I liked Sherlock and Mycrofts' conversations and I think they've really brought them on as characters. I thought Mary was great and I'm interested to see if they write her out or if she fits into the Holmes/Watson dynamic. Anderson was hilarious with his mad theories as was fan club girl and I thought Lestrade and Sherlocks reunion was lovely. Really suited his character and made me laugh.

I thought the humour was on point in this with the references to canon and the cutting from Mrs Hudson and Sherlock to John and his patient. I quite enjoyed the mix of crime show with drama. I thought it was a nice balance! I also love Molly a little bit more although I desperately want Sherlock to deduce Tom/Tim, I've forgotten his name. Budget Benedict is what I'll call him

Next episode: "The sign of 3."

Then "His last vow."

Then a 6 year break presumably.

Me too. That when given an actual reveal it's still not good enough for them and they think there must be more so carry on speculating new fantastical theories.
I'm surprised that quite a few people actually felt it was a hint that Sherlock didn't actually reveal the true explanation.
I doubt very much that this will be revisited.

I don't agree with posters who say that a reveal of a magic trick is disappointing, as I often find that explanations of magic tricks can be brilliant. In fact after most episodes of Sherlock, or shows like Hustle, we are always treated to a reveal, and for the most part I really enjoy seeing how something was pulled off. I remember watching the Penn and Teller magic show in the nineties and the trick reveals were probably more entertaining and satisfying than the actual tricks themselves.
With the TV series Hustle it was always about how delicious the reveal was going to turn out to be and the anticipation of the explanation.

Sherlock is a show which is usually full of reveals of 'tricks' so I don't understand how some posters can say that they find trick reveals disappointing.

My impression was he was letting Watson think they were going to die so he'd forgive Sherlock. Sherlock *had* called the police, and the bomb squad.



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I really enjoyed the episode, particularly the nods to the fans and the fanfiction. I thought John repeatedly punching Sherlock was maybe a little OTT but it definitely needed a punch.
I actually quite liked Mary - she wasn't forced down our throats. I didn't think I'd like Amanda Abbington but she was really quite tolerable
For me it was a great return. I hope we get a little more plot driven in the next episode though, although it was all necesary in this one.
Of course we all knew that John and Sherlock were going to escape the bomb, but I did have a scary thought that Moffat may have been teasing us all along and was going to black out right there and kill them off, to give the fans a taste of their own medecine for coming up with the Moriarty/Sherlock pairing.
Also, loved Sherlock being grateful to Molly. I hope she can be happy...I think she's the everywoman in Sherlock, to be honest.

I'd agree with that. The Moriarty/Sherlock near kiss scene seemed like a nod to the hardcore fanbase, what with all their "fanfiction". There were plenty of others that I didn't catch.

Perhaps, but I still think that would be about trying to introduce doubt into 'our' minds, even after having been given the truth.

Where has there ever been such a break? There have always been 2 years between series.


So why should there be a new series every year?

It did feel way too self aware and self referential than it usually does for my liking.
It felt like the show was saying 'look at how popular we are. Look at how everyone is talking about us. Look at how everyone is speculating about our last show'. Which is probably true, but I don't think I liked that aspect of it. It felt like the show was preening itself and smugly patting itself on its back.

So something which many on this thread say they loved when it was addressing the show's own fans, I didn't.

I still enjoyed it and it was simply too good compared to the vast majority of TV shows out there for me to be too critical about that.
But I really hope that this episode was a brief excursion into this territory and it doesn't become a habit.
I hope service is resumed in the next two episodes.
The thing is that they only have 3 episodes per series and they don't really have a lot of time to play around like this and have the show massage its own ego when it's such a long wait between series for only 3 episodes at a time.

Really ? by that time i had lost the will to live.

Emotional, deep, romantic drama I can find anywhere.

I want Sherlock Holmes.

Not this Dr Who in a deerstalker, fan hysteria, dragged out, implausible drivel.

Fair enough I understand where you're coming from, shows can quite easily become victims of their own success. It really worked for me but I can see exactly why it wouldn't work for other people. Then again, I want Sherlock's babies, so I'll forgive the show pretty much anything

Me too.

Re the bit in bold, there was close to two years between seasons one and two, and a two-year cycle has always been intentional, I believe.

Indeed, it was this broad window which allowed Cumberbatch to shoot Star Trek 2 (and other films - he's been busy!) and Freeman to do The Hobbit (I know BC is in it too, but he was providing voice only rather than being the star of the piece). And from previous interviews we know that it was Peter Jackson that rearranged the Hobbit shooting schedule to fit around Sherlock, and not the other way round - which is quite something when you think about it.

As I've said in my review and elsewhere, I loved this. Offering no definitive solution (which is how I read the Sherlock version to Anderson - I see it as him toying with him rather than telling him the truth) was a clever way of sidestepping the inevitable issue of coming up with an 'answer' that half the fans disagree with.

Unlike some others here, I really enjoyed the character piece too. Conan Doyle reset the relationship too quickly on Holmes' return in my opinion (Watson faints, then all's well again), so I appreciated the examination of how the relationship had fractured and actually needed the high-stress situation of the bomb to fully repair it by forcing John to forgive Sherlock out loud.

It's a hat-tip to the original story. Holmes appears to Watson disguised as an elderly, wizened book collector carrying books about tree worshipping, British birds and the Holy War among others. The man in Watson's GP surgery shows John a DVD about tree worship, a 'British birds' porn mag - which, if you'd spotted the link by then, is hilarious - and a DVD about the Holy War. A subtle nod that doesn't detract from the scene, but a funny one for the geeks (like me).