Sherlock: The Six Thatchers (2017) - Written Review

Sorry for the lateness of this review. I did write this last week, but I completely forgot to post it. Although, to be fair I completely forgot Sherlock was actually on last week!

There's a reason I've never reviewed Sherlock before and that's kind of because of the controversial hype culture its developed since its inception in 2010. Back when it first started, Sherlock was this out of nowhere hit that surprised everyone, and being co-created by Steven Moffat, and after how great his first series as show-runner on Doctor Who had been, it didn't seem to be a fluke at the time. Two years later and Sherlock: series two basically blew everyone away with how brilliant it was, and made Sherlock such a big deal that anyone who hadn't watched the show before was either caught up in the hype culture it had created or had the complete antithesis of hating the show and how big it had become. That's probably why series three was the one that really divided people, with some realizing that maybe Sherlock had had its moment and that was it and some loving what seemed like more of a filler season after a pretty tense and dark second instalment. At this point I was in the latter part of the fan-base, but it was The Abominable Bride special last year that actually killed the show for me. Suddenly all the slightly pompous jokes and fourth-wall breaks were forced to the centre of an episode that completely miss-sold itself and thus broke down into fan-service in a convoluted story-line with no clear plot, structure or even character development that ended up just leaving me confused and infuriated. As a nice bit of correlation, about four weeks prior to that episode I'd watched the series 9 finale of Doctor Who, Hell Bent, and left that infuriated by its fan-service, lack of clear plot, structure or character development and had completely miss-sold itself. Both Doctor Who and Sherlock were showcasing the exact same problems, and both shows had the exact same show-runner and main writer.

Now, obviously Mark Gatiss is also the show-runner and main writer of Sherlock and not Doctor Who, which seems to only really work as the excuse for The Abominable Bride's mediocre reception from its fan-base compared with Hell Bent's, but in all honesty Gatiss is so close to Moffat that it was pretty unlikely he'd keep Sherlock's quality up if Moffat's writing as a whole fell apart.

Point being that I'd loved the show up to the point of last year and at that point pretty much lost any patience with it. Sherlock was becoming exactly what I'd hoped it wouldn't and was appealing to a fan-base it didn't need to appeal to in the first place. Surely you'd think the series would appeal to fans of the books rather than Tumblr bloggers and 'shippers', but that's what we got. Sherlock basically became a walking internet post and I just wasn't interested in watching that anymore.

Thus, I approached Series Four with a very negative, if optimistic mind-set that was really hoping for something good and judging from this first episode, I got...something close at least.

The Six Thatchers is first up in the series, and is credited as a Mark Gatiss episode, and I'm stuck here honestly wondering what the hell to think about it all. The opening fifteen to twenty minutes I really didn't like, despite some good moments. It all felt artificially zany and almost like a self-parody with its all-over-the-place structure. The whole "Moriarty can't be back" thing already feels tired but the episode almost turned this into a knowing wink to the audience with Sherlock himself basically obsessing over everything being connected to Moriarty, even though it isn't. Sherlock basically became his fan-base in that respect, and I can't help but appreciate that as a really clever move on the part of Gatiss.

When the plot finally did come into play I really did get into it, and while some reveals felt overly-obvious, the episode had a clear goal and stuck with it. There didn't seem to be too much distracting from this main plot, even if at around the hour mark I suddenly realized Watson had almost entirely disappeared from the episode. There's some really random stuff in there, like the bit with the dog, and Mary's whole escape plan, which did throw me a bit, but the way the whole mystery started off with the exploding car story-line which then built into a plot revolving around Mary's past coming back to haunt her was really well-built into the episode. Which, thinking about it, is really surprising given how much I hated the twist about Mary being a secret agent in series three.

Basically, The Six Thatchers, when it had a clear plot, was a really strong episode.

If there's one thing that basically killed the episode for me though, it was the whole Watson having a divorce sub-plot. It was something the episode just sort of threw in for added drama and felt really unnecessary. Watson's been made out as such a nice guy and a sort-of everyman over the past six years that having him turn around and do something like that felt like a betrayal of the audience's trust. Maybe that's intentional, but Watson has always been the main character of Sherlock, and keeping your main character out of action and then doing such a potentially controversial twist seems like a huge mistake on the part of the Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat that I feel almost like I'm left with no characters to like on the show any more. I mean, yes, Benedict Cumberbatch is great as Sherlock but he's not meant to really be that likable in the first place.

So I guess I was ready to think nothing more on the episode until they actually went and killed Mary. A main character actually died in Sherlock. You know what, I'm actually crossing my fingers now that every character apart from Sherlock and maybe Watson and his child get killed off by the end of the series. Having Sherlock either end or continue with most of its main characters having been killed off is a really interesting direction to take the series after playing it safe for so long. Although, come to think of it, keep Mrs Hudson around. I think we all need Mrs Hudson.

I should probably mention here and now though that Rachel Talalay directed this episode, and she's a brilliant director even without Sherlock on her belt, and really did not disappoint here. Sure, it was way too over-stylised but Talalay makes every shot look stunning and the TV budget limitations almost seem to have vanished from the series. The way she angles the text bubbles and integrates the Skype calls is so well-done that I find it difficult to moan about how over-used that style is. It kind of proves that if done well, a really gimmicky style can actually work well. The cinematography was also fantastic and the score from David Arnold and Michael Price had some great motifs in there too.

Overall, The Six Thatchers is a bit of an odd episode in that I really liked large chunks of it but absolutely loathed some smaller, but equally important parts. In all honesty I feel like I'm at a cross-roads with giving it a score, because I'm not really sure whether or not I'll like it more or less given time. So, for now, I'm going to give the episode a 6/10.