Sherlock

Season 1: I have to say that I haven't had the pleasure of seeing such a well-executed update in a long time. Formally, the BBC series is made according to all the rules of modernity, but there are moments that seem unusually old-fashioned, and which seem to return the world of contemporary London, with all its proprieties, back to the dark and winding streets in which all sorts of scum can be found. Sherlock remains at its core the most traditional detective story for which action and dynamism are a means to irony (a stroboscopically chaotic brawl at the Planetarium in the Great Game, earthy grains in a Chinese circus in The Blind Banker, etc.). The main weapons of the character, brought to life with brilliant incisiveness by Benedict Cumberbatch, are deduction and sarcasm. And the main weapon of the series is the breathtaking Watson-Holmes duet, which surpasses Ritchie's more famous roster by two levels. At the same time, however, both the characters and the cases are extremely faithful to the spirit of Doyle's work, without limiting them in the foxy pop culture. It is boundless pleasure to see Holmes subdue and reinterpret modern series mantras, and it gives you the impudent opportunity to see how the Hound of Baskerville, played by this creative group, would turn out. Sherlock simply brings back the dark and bewitching mystery that has always been part of traditional detective stories, and the series manages to do so without having to go back in time. Which, from my point of view, is undoubtedly genius. (17.08.2010)

I don't know if I can find out exactly the moment when the refined and clever show became a bombastic display of cheesy masks and self-centered twists, in which the detective serves only as an alibi for developing the increasingly frail story of the central triangle... In any case, I can quite clearly assess (even without the help of a therapist, who, by the way, is needed by the creators rather than the characters) that the symptoms worsen and Sherlock becomes an inconsistent and disintegrated jumble. It is held together only by the would-be eccentric set pieces and the willingness of the fans to go with characters, whose only purpose is to keep hungry/uncritical fans on their toes. Even at the cost that the twists and the world in which they are embedded lose all justification. Bollocks. Compared to this conclusion, Cimrman's The Gale from the Mountains is a masterpiece of plot motivations. (09.01.2017)

This is no longer eccentric, narcissistic, or convoluted. This is ... just a stupid scream fest. Please, no more family therapies, forgotten family members or dogs that used to be human. I hope that Gatiss and Moffat enjoyed their incest party and pass the creative reins to someone who can combine more than two identical elements and the "I'm someone else" twist. (16.01.2017)