Sherlock’s Final Problem: what a mess.

[major spoiler warning for those who still haven’t watched The Final Problem]

If you watched this week’s season finale (and, quite possible, the series finale as well) and felt satisfied by the payoff of everything set up in last week’s The Lying Detective, then you probably won’t like what you’re about to read. If, however, your reaction to this episode was an overwhelming ‘WTF did I just watch?‘, which is pretty much how I felt throughout the feature-length Sherlock swan song, then by all means, let’s commiserate.

Sherlock Season 4: a slow burn?

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are big-shot movie stars these days and have obviously been keeping rather busy with other projects, but Sherlock is finally back with its 4th season, after a prolonged two-year hiatus.

I must admit, I didn’t have really high hopes for this one, given how underwhelming the Abominable Bride had been last year, but this season delivered so far, even though it didn’t start by putting its best foot forward.

Book to screen: how much poetic licence do we allow?

Of course, we’re not the ones doing the allowing. It’s up to the screenplay writers to adapt the book to screen, however they see fit.

Sometimes the books themselves pose the problem: whatever universe is created in the author’s mind might be extremely hard – indeed, sometimes downright impossible – to translate to the screen in a believable way. In some cases it’s done masterfully, in others… well, the results can range from kitch to awful, with bad CGI and even worse acting and directing being the usual culprits.

But for the sake of this post, I have to assume that the writers’ and directors’ vision was originally to stay true to the raw material. To take this carefully crafted world they were handed in book form and bring it to life in front of our very eyes. So what is it that usually goes wrong?