Sherlock (2010) Season 1

I watched the first season of the new English series "Sherlock," loosely based on Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, except the events on screen take place in modern-day London. My impressions are mostly positive, but the only episode that raised no complaints is the last, third one, into which they crammed as much as possible.

Genre-wise, it's only partly a detective story; the creators put the emphasis on spectacle, sacrificing the great detective's intellect. There's plenty of action and tension, of course, though in that respect it's far behind Guy Ritchie's Holmes, but from an American comic-book adaptation you don't expect much, while this was the work of the English themselves, and the moves made to attract a mass audience are somewhat disappointing.

I didn't like that in the first episode Sherlock failed to recognize the murderer when they met, after he had fully described the criminal's behavior, so that even viewers who hadn't read the original and hadn't seen the Soviet adaptation were able to figure out who the culprit was. In the second episode, I was downright astonished that some random girl was able to grasp the principle of the cipher that Holmes had been fruitlessly struggling with for several days.

The last episode nearly disappointed me — in it, too, it's clear to the viewer from the very start what's going on, and everyone on screen nudges the viewer toward it, except for Sherlock, who in the end admits that he understood everything from the start. I liked the finale most of all, since a decent portion of it is devoted to the detective element, thanks to the unraveling of five cases at once, all tied together. And Holmes turned out to resemble Holmes, staying one step ahead.

They did a good job moving the deductive method into the modern world; it's interesting to watch how the reasoning gets adapted. Introducing an overarching Moriarty storyline makes what's happening look more far-fetched, but at the same time it draws you in more. I'll be waiting for the second season; I hope they do go ahead and make it.