Last week saw the airing of the Season 4 finale of BBC Sherlock. This season has been the most controversial yet from the fans’ perspective. On the one hand, the show is becoming more action-packed and the characters are developing but on the other, it is becoming more confusing for the audience and variating widely from the original books by Arthur Conan Doyle.
BBC’s adaptation of Sherlock started off well in 2010, roughly following stories from the original books. The first two seasons were extremely popular due to the mysteries that were wrapped up in a satisfying way for the viewers to comprehend at the end of each episode. Lately, especially in Season 4, it has not been like that at all. Instead of this, viewers have been left bewildered by all the almost implausible new elements of the show, for example Sherlock’s unknown sister. This confusion led to the finale having the lowest audience figure of the show’s history.
Sherlock’s character has started to be tampered with. The brilliant, anti-social and unemotional detective created in the original books has been distorted into an unintelligible, drug-addled wreck. In the books, it was frequently mentioned that Sherlock used cocaine to stimulate his brain cells during difficult cases. At the time of the books’ publication, cocaine was not illegal so this was fine in that era. But now, in the 21st century, when many forms of drug are illegal and have many known health issues associated with the use of them, Sherlock being a drug addict simply downplays his character and makes him seem less of a role model to young people who look up to him.
In the books, the detective is portrayed as an emotionless, “highly functioning sociopath” who only cares (mildly) about his best friend, John Watson. However, in BBC’s Sherlock, there are mushy hugging scenes, declarations of love and several breakdowns. Many of the young audience watching Sherlock believe that John and Sherlock are in love and this pairing even has the nickname “Johnlock”. BBC appear to be playing on this by putting scenes in like the famous hugging scene of 4x02. The writers of the show, Steven Moffatt and Mark Gatiss, simply want to queerbait the audience in the hope of more money.
Season 4 has become ridiculously like a James Bond style show. Mrs Hudson, who is now shown to be the widow of a rich drug-dealer, surprisingly owns and drives an Aston Martin and does so like a maniac. Along with this there have been bombs, helicopters, terrorists, and frequent shooting and torture scenes. This definitely strays far away from Conan Doyle’s books and even the early seasons of the show.
All good things must come to an end. Even popular TV shows like Sherlock. Instead of dragging it on further simply in the prospect of making money, maybe it should end before it gets even worse than it already has.
