mrshouse wrote:

...., there are suspicions and the patients are treated according to them to proof the diagnosis. Weird. ...

Completely OT, but that's pretty much what I experience in real life... (with the vet it's even worse, but then I have a lot more contact with him than with my doctor). Whereas I don't remember it from House (which I love as well, btw, at least the first seasons before they ran out of good medical mysteries and had to fill time with relationships and drug problems). And I do remember my tv magazine filling space by asking an actual M.D. about various hospital series and he didn't have any problem with Dr. House.

Vhanja wrote:

I personally find this scene to be one of the most horrible in the series, I can barely watch it. This is Sherlock torturing a dying man to satisfy his own curiousity. It doesn't really get much worse than that, in my opinion.

Well, next season Sherlock will throw a tied-up guy out of the flat's window...

Britigander wrote:

...
Perhaps inevitably I feel a little rant coming on about aspects of the 'science/technology' (both as depicted and as described) that are wide of the mark and simply need not be so....

Thank you so much! It's driving me crazy as well! For example the whole weight/sandbag thing with the arrow: I'm 99 % sure that the weight would fall all the way (probably accelerating on its way down) once it's heavier than the sandbag - without stopping a few inches above the trigger mechanism.

 

kazza474 wrote:

The show is not made solely for an audience of scientists, linguistic experts or music aficionados. It is NOT a tutorial. It is made for the public in general and especially for those with a love of the ACD canon. ....

If the last part was true, then Sherlock should come with a warning: Do not watch this unless you love ACD's Sherlock Holmes stories and know at least 2/3 of them by heart. Which would severely limit the audience, probably to the point of the show being unsellable. As you say,  the show is for  "the public in general", and that means that experts in all sorts of fields (nearly everybody is an expert in something) will be watching it.

It would be a sign of courtesy and respect towards this general public if Mofitt tried to get the maximum of details (of reality - not the number of steps up to the flat, etc.) right. Unfortunately, at the moment I'm wondering whether Mofitt have made any effort to get any details of today's world right - do they think we are all idiots? (End of my rant, back to the show.)

Why exactly is Sherlock breaking into Soo Lin's flat? So she hasn't picked up her yellow pages - how does that justify B & E (or would it be just E, given that the window is open)? Maybe she doesn't need a paper phonebook and can't be bothered to bring it to the recycling container. Maybe she spent the last three days lying on her sofa, thinking ;)
 

SusiGo wrote:

....And remember, this is Sherlock before John. They have only just met and John has not yet started telling him about "a bit not good" and "timing".....
 

So the murderer is expected to have a good influence on the torturer???

It took me a few viewings (when Jeff Hope talks the brains of the listeners seem to switch off) to realize it, but John shoots without knowing anything about the situation! He knows that the phone is probably with the serial killer, he knows that Sherlock got into a taxi - presumably the same one that's standing there. He knows that he is very much afraid for Sherlock and when he finds him he sees that Sherlock is talking to a guy and about to put something into his mouth.

Which could be a Tic-Tac for all John knows. And the Cabbie could just be telling Sherlock where he found the phone.

Yet John shoots...  I still think the shot was impossible but I accept it as movie magic. Hmm, or maybe, (in memory of Desmond Bagley and other writers) John didn't aim at the Cabbie at all but hit him by accident. For I believe that any kind of distraction - like a shot shattering the window and hitting the wall - would have brought Sherlock back to his senses. (I mean, really! Why swallow a posssibly poisonous pill if you want to find out what it contains? Pocket it and have it analyzed...) But that's not how it is presented in the show ("excellent shot with nerves of steel, strong moral principle" - quoted from memory).

Frankly, if there had been a court case, I'm not sure that John would have walked away free.

And in view of that it really bugs me that John seems to keep the pistol. Which Sherlock then uses to shoot at the wall. Which should bring the police in about 10 minutes flat (what works in Belgravia works in Baker street), who then confiscate the gun, run a test and have the weapon for an unsolved crime.... (admittedly, I know next to nothing about the British justice system, but whereas the Cabbies death closes the 4

Well, if you want to scare people (possibly to death - or commit some other crime - I've read the book ages ago and forgotten all about it) - why stop at poisoning a dog? The poor thing would be collateral damage... Or would phosphorus make it drop dead immediately, before it had fulfilled its role?

Back to A Scandal in Belgravia: I agree that John having been in a regiment that doesn't exist anymore is not such a huge deal. Neither is Bart's (which I hadn't even picked up on). What I can't understand is why Mofitt stick to canon in small things (who cares about the number of steps up to the flat?) but apparantly think nothing about changing the big ones - like the outcome of the scandal. In A Scandal in Bohemia Irene Adler wins! I'm offended on her behalf that she wasn't allowed to do so in A Scandal in Belgravia...

I'm in the lucky position of having forgotten most of the original Sherlock. I feel even luckier not to have read the above-quoted blogs (why do people watch a show if they don't like the central character????)
BBC Sherlock is intelligent, good-looking and has a sense of humour. I like him as he is - right from the cab ride to Lauriston Gardens when Watson compliments him on his analysis and Sherlock remarks: "That's not what people normally say." "What do they normally say?" "Piss off!" - the little smile accompanying the last sentence won me over. (Just like I've always liked Dr. House because he didn't make a fuss when a patient knocked him down.)
So I quite simply don't understand much of the above discussion and I certainly don't think that Moftiss have assassinated Sherlock's character (I haven't yet heard the commentaries to Season 3, though).

However, as I've just started reading "A Study in Scarlet", I think that they don't really do Sherlock justice either: When we meet Sherlock in the book he has just discovered a means to identify blood stains with certainty - he's working at the forefront of forensic medecine. ACD's Sherlock does not just "have the mind of a scientist" - he is a scientist. (But I admit that if Moftiss wanted to bring that across, we'd have another version of CSI, who are, IMHO, Sherlock Holmes's natural successors).

I don't know why the world is obsessed - actually I have doubts whether the "world" is, I still have to find somebody in real life who's even seen the show.
But what fascinates me is the combination of great characters (I've always like Sherlock Holmes, read the book as a teen, saw the movies when they were on tv, without being an active fan and I very much like Benedict Cumberbatch's interpretation), stunning visuals (I love the behind the scenes documentaries of how they did some of the work) and less than perfect writing (to put it mildly).
Not the dialogue, there's some great lines. But the plots leave a lot to be desired and the technical and scientific details are at best implausible or even simply wrong - I'll be spending hours re-watching the episodes trying to find all the problems ;) Of course, ideally I'd have Sherlock here to dissect the show with (now wouldn't that be fun!) but as that's not going to happen, I hope you won't mind standing in for him.
Having just watched HBO's The Wire, which critics say is excellently written, realistic, all the details right (not knowing anything about the drug scene or dock workers in Baltimore, I wouldn't know - it certainly seems real), I can say that "bad" shows are a lot more fun. They make me think, check up on things, try to find fan fiction with better stories, find a forum to discuss things... Whereas, when the authors have done a good job, there's nothing left for me to do but watch.



 

I'm pretty sure that quite a lot of soldiers (and other people with military connections) would notice that Moftiss used a regiment that doesn't exist any more (I looked it up when my alarm bells started ringing while reading the beginning of A Study in Scarlet). As I've said elsewhere - either one updates, or one doesn't. And if one decides to update, then please do it properly, all the way. I find the constant mixture of Victorian and modern rather annoying.

And that's the BIG question: Is the series supposed to be just a homage to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Full of references to the original and little insider jokes, written by fans for fans?

Or is it supposed to be a series of films that (also) work for today's audience, even if they have never read a single Sherlock Holmes story in their lives? I should think the second option would result in a much bigger audience for the show, i. e. a more successful show.  (You may remember that Peter Jackson took great care to make LOTR films that would work for both fans and viewers ignorant of the original).

Frankly, I think one should either stick to the original - i. e. leave Sherlock in Victorian England. Or update completely, and that would mean Sherlock not just sending text messages, but also using a gas chromatograph for chemical analysis (instead of a microscope - another WTF moment, or rather several of them). You don't have to agree, but do you see what I mean?

 

French:
S1:
Une étude en pink
Le banquier aveugle
Le grand jeu
S2:
Un scandale à Buckingham (!)
Les chiens de Baskerville
La chute de Reichenbach
S3:
Le cercueil vide
Le signe des trois
Son dernier coup d'éclat