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#Review sherlock the empty hearse series#
We’ve seen that part before, of course, but this time we’re shown the bigger picture: a series of crash cuts revealing a Mission: Impossible–style team of agents, a cast of extras, and British mentalist Derren Brown helping the cantankerous crime-solver to set the scene whilst the detective himself bungees off of the building, smashes through a window, and smooches Molly before popping the collar on his iconic trenchcoat and waltzing off to a pounding dubstep soundtrack.īut just when you think the world has gone mad, that the show’s jumped the shark, nuked the fridge, and indeed bungeed the Sherlock we’re brought back to earth with a bump, Detective Lestrade voicing the opinion we’d all been building toward over the preceding five minutes: “Bollocks!” Indeed, it all turns out to have been nothing more than a conspiracy cooked up by a guilt-ridden Anderson, the forensic expert who played a prominent role in Sherlock’s undoing at the hands of Jim Moriarty. For now, ‘The Empty Hearse’ marks a thrilling and vastly enjoyable opener to the third season that, by gum, leaves us wanting more.Īirs at 9pm on Wednesday 1 January 2014 on BBC One.The season-two cliff-hanger of what happened to Sherlock Holmes ranks up there with TV’s biggest mysteries: Who shot J.R.? What exactly is the island on Lost? And just who are the people still tuning in to Fox’s Dads? But “The Empty Hearse” doesn’t waste time pondering Holmes’s fate further, picking the action up right where we left off almost two years ago with Sherlock tossing his phone and seemingly leaping to his demise from the top of London’s St Bart’s Hospital. Having attended to a whole lot of business in ‘The Empty Hearse’, we’re sure that the second episode, ‘The Sign of Three’, will see a return to the mind-boggling, headache-inducing plots that have come to define Sherlock. Particularly enjoyable is the way in which Sherlock’s reappearance is played out through the reactions of Mrs Hudson (Una Stubbs), Lestrade (Rupert Graves) and, of course, Molly (Louise Brealey) – leading to perhaps the best visual gag of the episode in its closing moments. Indeed, comic moments crop up all over the place (to the extent that we found ourselves yearning for an Odd Couple-style Holmes/Watson sitcom). Sherlock’s reveal to Watson that he is still alive marks a highpoint, with Holmes – in his characteristically sociopathic way – grossly misjudging the situation and using it as an opportunity for comedy. Thus, where ‘The Empty Hearse’ truly shines is in the fun that’s had. For fear of spoilers, we’ll refrain from saying much on this subject, but it must be said that, though the ‘Reichenbach’ solution is handled in a distinctly unique and clever (read: Moffatian) way, it somewhat engulfs the episode. There’s a nice little mystery surrounding a man disappearing on a tube train, and a brilliant last-minute rescue sequence involving Holmes, Watson and Watson’s new missus Mary (Freeman’s real life partner Amanda Abbington), but ultimately what dominates here – and admittedly what most people will be chomping at the bit to see – is the solution to Holmes’ faked suicide at the end of Season 2. When compared to the head-spinning twists and turns of ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, ‘The Empty Hearse’ seems to have set its sights relatively low. In all honesty, the criminal plot unwound in this first episode isn’t the best evidence of Moffat’s and Gatiss’s capacity for complex, original storytelling. With speculation abounding about how Sherlock faked his death, Watson (Martin Freeman) stung by his best pal’s two-year-long deceit and a London-wide conspiracy to detonate a huge bomb in the works, Holmes has – once again – his fair share to contend with.
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Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) comes back to the threat of a terrorist attack on London, which sees him mobilising his troops, dusting off his armchair back at 221b Baker Street and, of course, donning his very best coat once again. Written by co-creator Mark Gatiss (who also appears as Sherlock’s older brother Mycroft), first episode ‘The Empty Hearse’ sees our curly-haired hero “return from the dead” after two years travelling the world and dismantling Jim Moriarty’s criminal network. After a two-year gap, Sherlock is back for three more devilishly intricate, deliriously fun episodes.