Tag Archive: Sherlock


BLACKOUT HITS BBC

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July 19, 2012

BLACKOUT – BBC One 

Booze is god but takes Daniel Demoys (Christopher Eccleston) on a one way ticket to hell (and back again).

If you want gritty Northern drama,Christopher Eccleston is a go to actor. In Blackout he convincingly plays alcoholic Daniel Demoys embroiled in a web of violence and deception largely of his own making.

He’s a corrupt local councillor who is supplementing his income by selling information about tenders for  lucrative service contracts.  This extra cash funds his heavy drinking and occasional whoring. When he’s not on the dark side he is a loving father and devoted husband. Redemption is on hand but comes at a cost.

This is an entertaining three parter directed by Tom Green and written by Bill Gallagher who clearly fancied working on something meatier after his adaption of Lark Rise To Candleford.

The brooding ambient soundtrack, constant rain, noirish photography and stylised aerial shots all conspire to give a Bladerunner quality to the unnamed metropolis. The actual location is referred to only as ‘the city’ but ,as it’s somewhere ‘up North’  with awful weather,  the smart money is on Manchester. Continue reading →

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SHERLOCK SURVIVES YET ANOTHER FINAL PROBLEM

Filed under: Fiction, Movies, Television — Leave a comment
January 22, 2012

In 1893 Dr John Watson wrote “with a heavy heart” that any attempt at recovering the bodies of  Sherlock Holmes and his adversary Moriarty was absolutely hopeless,after they had plunged “locked in each other’s arms” down Reichenbach Falls (“that dreadful caldron of swirling water and seething foam”).

Can this really be the end? Of course not, silly!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must have had an inkling at the backlash news of Holmes’ demise would cause and by not having a body allowed him the option of a miraculous (yet unexplained) death defying escape (which also conveniently helped Doyle survive his own financial difficulties).

Money/ratings lie at the heart of Holmes’ apparent indestructible qualities in the second Guy Ritchie movie with Robert Downey Jr and at the end of the second series of BBC’s Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Of the three, the TV resurrection is the one that stretches credibility the most because we see him jump of a building and get a close-up of his bloody body on the ground.  Theories abound on the forum pages of how he cheated the Grim Reaper this time while in an interview with The Guardian ,  one of the show’s scriptwriters Steven Moffat says smugly  “There is a clue everybody’s missed,……….we’ve worked out how Sherlock survives, and actually shot part of what really happened. It all makes sense.”

While we await season three to see if he is as good as his word, one forum comment sets another conundrum : “The biggest mystery in last night’s episode was how the reincarnated Sherlock managed to get his hands on the EXACT same Belstaff coat. Particularly when they are no longer making them”.

That’s the kind of elementary observational genius that made Sherlock the man he is.

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