Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH – SHERLOCK – SERIES FOUR – BBC - 2017

It has all to do with Conan Doyle though it is antipodean to that poor Sir Conan. We are in the modern world and Sherlock’s minds works like a texting machine that receives myriads of texts from all over the world and from all periods of time, past, present and future. He can thus read in his mental texting smart phone anything that has happened, is happening and will happen forever and ever. It is absolutely hilarious at times but texts are easy to jump from one deep – wine or root beer? – cellar to the top of a tower – London’s Monument I guess – in less than 140 characters. Sherlock in other words is the super Tweeting Twitterer and he should be recommended to President Trump: that might give his American counterpart some inspiration to be more dramatic and not melodramatic and a lot funnier with his tweets.

This fourth series that comes to the final problem of Sherlock’s life that explains how everything he is and he does is the result of his superiority over his brother Mycroft who is well introduced in government circles but is an infamous coverer-up. But it is revealed there was a third child in the family, a daughter and that’s the final problem because she was so much more superior to her two brothers that she could not be tolerated free in normal mediocre society. In five minutes she was able to reprogram anyone that approached her and touched her.

The daughter is the dominant evil-doer in this fourth series and she even pulls the strings of Moriarty. And yet Sherlock can bring the survivors, his friend Dr. Watson, his brother Mycroft, his sister Eurus, Dr. Watson’s son and Mrs. Hudson, not to mention the Holmes parents, together with his violin and his music that communicates with the Stradivarius of his sister Eurus. Peace and quiet in Brexit and the world is at peace too and can go on with its humdrum silliness.

I don’t think this series is that brilliant. The special effects are simple and I will not take you for ignorant film-watchers by enumerating the models and allusions. You will capture them just like me and even probably more than I because I am not that learned and that would be quotations and I don’t need these crutches. But they are too many and in the last episode one is even quoted: “Lost” mind you. I am sure the BBC could have done better than insert texts messages on the screen. It looks too much like a trip in the underground or the tube at peak hours when everyone is texting and reading texts around you and you don’t even have to look at the smart phones to see the messages jumping out and dancing in front of your eyes. People are so little modest and shy, bashful and timid about their texts and their tweets. Look at Trump how he makes it a great carnival parade.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU