I've just watched all three seasons (and not planning to buy #4).
Stellar actors in Freeman, Cumberbatch and the supporting cast. I particularly like this Lestrade...a man who puts duty before ego, and has the *amazing* maturity to suffer the demeaning treatment of Holmes, and still understand, and forgive, the damaged though brilliant person he is. Kudos too, to an unusual "Mary Watson", fully equal to the two men in her life. Molly began one dimensional but expanded into her own tragic arc...she was a woman to respect, as Sherlock too came to see. The two chief villians are short on believability but long on creepiness; stellar acting again, though. Mycroft, too, was an excellent rendition.
Plot believability suffered in a number of episodes... in the "Hound", the actors suddenly recovered from their delusion-inducing gassing, to make immediate speeches!
Sadly, the writers were determined to make Sherlock a martyr for a love he couldn't obtain, and give the whole series a miserable spin. The one-sided homoerotic subtext was pretty heartbreaking. In the bachelor pub spree, a drunk Watson puts his hand on Sherlock's knee, to which Sherlock replies "Go ahead, I don't mind." (I don't think Watsion is gay; he is rather a man with a need he must somehow express in acceptable terms in society...not homosexuality, but a need for violence, thrills, adrenalin, danger. Sherlock thus is Watson's "fix").
But I did read this Sherlock as closet homoerotic. Or at least deeply lonely. He however remains strangulated and unable to express emotions except in a "double blind" pretence ("I'm saying this but it's a jest or a ruse [and that's the only way I can say it]" when, of course, it is not jest or ruse, but deeply felt).
Thus this is a damaged, ultimately sad, broken Sherlock, in my opinion. For all his childish rudeness, I felt sorry for this lonely, flawed character.
This Sherlock adopted his Watson as one would a dog. He thought he needed someone to admire and love him. He wanted love and praise from the dog, to ease his innate insecurity and loneliness. But as anyone who has ever adopted a dog knows, we may *think* that, when we take on the tail-wagging dog, but in the end, we realise *we* needed to love, even more than *be* loved, as we had assumed. So Sherlock martyrs himself for the unrequited love he feels for his Watson.
A sad, but fascinating, series.
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