Sherlock’s now so clever-clever, it’s stupid

NO cliche was left unturned as Dr Watson’s wife Mary met her death in Sherlock, throwing herself in front of a bullet meant for the Great Detective.

Her noble self-sacrifice came at the end of a scene crammed with stock phrases from spy novels. ‘Maybe I can still surprise you,’ laughed the villainess, as she pointed her revolver at Holmes. It’s a wonder she didn’t call him ‘Mr Bond’.

When Mary hit the floor, we knew she couldn’t be quite dead yet – there was still time for Watson to burst in, utter a low moan of despair and cradle his wife’s body while she gasped her last, like lovers in an overwrought Victorian tragedy.

‘Stay with me,’ he begged. ‘You made me so happy,’ she murmured. This cheesy bunkum took on an unpleasantly ironic edge, given that the actors – Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington – had ended their 16-year relationship just two weeks before filming the episode.

Even after she was dead, Mary couldn’t resist dragging stale old ideas from the box marked ‘melodrama’. She left a video for Sherlock, opening with the words: ‘If you’re watching this, I’m probably dead.’

There’s supposed to be a crack of lightning and a thunderclap whenever that line is spoken. Of course, we’ve only got her word for it that she really is dead.

She did drop a hint about how Sherlock would ‘miss’ her, which is supposed to be criminal mastermind Moriarty’s catchphrase. Could she actually be Mary-arty?

That would be typical. Sherlock has become so clever-clever, it’s stupid. In one digression, writer Mark Gatiss, who also plays big brother Mycroft Holmes, took delight in having Holmes solve a succession of ridiculously outre mysteries with rapid-fire deductions.

And the script mimicked every hackneyed espionage tradition – chess games during hostage rescues, flippant banter at gunpoint, torture sequences, and even some complicated plot explanations during a fist fight.

Clearly, Gatiss is getting bored of Sherlock, and wishes he could write the next 007 film.

The story was distantly based on a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story about a pearl hidden in one of six busts of Napoleon Bonaparte, but you can rely on the Beeb to give an old tale a Leftie twist whenever possible.

Napoleon was replaced by plaster heads of Margaret Thatcher, which were smashed, shattered, crushed and battered with hammers in loving close-up.

In a running joke, the omniscient Holmes refused to admit that he knew who Mrs Thatcher was. And when he first saw her photograph, he muttered a line from Shakespeare: ‘By the pricking of my thumbs...’ and left us to fill in the next line, ‘Something wicked this way comes.’ But for all the self-conscious references and sixth-form braininess, this episode frequently flagged. It was the first modern-day Sherlock story for three years, as last year’s was set in Victorian times.

After such a long sabbatical, the series ought to have built up fresh energy for an explosive return.

Instead, there were flat patches and disjointed scenes, with irrelevant segments slotted in to pad things out. Trimming it down to an hour wouldn’t simply have been easy, it would have made the show much better.

Sherlock, it seems, has run out of ideas. We left the detective and the doctor feuding, with Watson blaming his friend for Mary’s death. He had a point – Mrs Watson had hurled herself into the path of a bullet travelling in infinitesimal slow-motion. If she had time to do that, why didn’t he just step out of the way himself?

Lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch has hinted that this will be the final Sherlock series, and that the next two Sundays will bring the characters to a conclusion that can never be reversed. Not before time.