Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Amanda Abbington, Lars Mikkelsen, Louise Brealey, Mark Gatiss, Lindsay Duncan, Una Stubbs, Yasmine Akram, Rupert Graves, Andrew Scott, Jonathan Aris, Tom Brooke, Wanda Ventham, Timothy Carlton, Calvin Demba, Tim Wallers, Glen Davies, Brigid Zengeni, Matthew Welsa, Louis Oliver.
Some things are just over a little too quickly. They are still magnificent, they keep you entertained and intrigued but the sense of having to wait for a lengthy period of time for a new series just as the action has reached a boiling point, a natural high of deduction, is far too much for some to bear.
The 21st Century update of Sherlock Holmes, brought to the screen by two of the sincerest creators of the age, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat has been nothing but superb. It has, in all that overused and almost terrifying cliché suggests, ticked every box and thankfully many that remained unseen and unnoticed by the audience and in the third and final story of the series, His Last Vow, Steven Moffat takes Sherlock Holmes in a territory that he has rarely been too over in over a hundred years of crime solving, resorting to the ultimate solution to protect the people he loves and also having been duped and betrayed for months by someone he had come to have high regard for.
For Steven Moffat to take this approach offers an even deeper insight into a man who has changed for every generation, it shows the strength of character needed to sometimes take the game to its chilling conclusion and even become that of which you hate the most in which to make sure evil never wins.
The question is how do you defeat an evil who is a mirror of you, who plays by the same rules as you and in which the only difference is the way that they use the power that have? It is a question that for a brief moment you can see the mask of arrogant assuredness slip and make Sherlock actually more human than you can ever hope for.
Pitted against the Napoleon of Blackmail, the newspaper mogul Charles Augustus Magnussen, played with exceeding brilliance and air of authority by Lars Mikkelsen, Sherlock and John Watson face off against a man who knows everybody’s deep dark secrets and with Mary Watson adding to this dangerous mix, it’s no wonder that Sherlock Holmes is seen as just slightly off his game.
This though was perhaps Martin Freeman’s finest moment in the three series as he also comes to terms with betrayal. As Doctor John Watson, the actor has breathed more than life into a character that really has only been justified by three screen actors before him, he has made him just as exciting to imagine being as the great detective himself. His moments on screen with his wife, the wonderful Amanda Abbington, both in real life and in the televised imagination of Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, have been nothing short of spectacular and shows exactly why so many people have rated him as an actor for so long. If Benedict Cumberbatch is the definite Holmes for the 21st Century then Martin Freeman deserves the same accolade heaped upon him for his portrayal as Doctor John Watson.
The final parting shot is perhaps the most telling, if the dragon slayer, the solver of crimes didn’t see the Voice of Terror die before his eyes then just why is the Napoleon of Crime suddenly plastered on every device all over the country? Moriarty lives on and the East wind surely brings ill fortune!
Ian D. Hall