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January 08, 2012

Comments

Noga

"It's a reasonable rule of thumb that when you have a detective successfully guessing the vital password, then you have a writer who's failing his audience."

This is the second Hartley rule I'll be memorizing.

The first was:

"There should be a law - I'll call it Hartley's Law - that ignorance expands to fill the space available."

Mr Eugenides

I agree. I haven't watched Baskerville yet, but I was underwhelmed by the first episode last week. Everyone raved about how great it was, but when I caught up with it a few days ago I found it curiously uninteresting, Irene Adler not nearly as attention-grabbing as she had been advertised (must be all the bromides in my tea), the plot pretty workaday and the ending just silly.

I did think the first series was, broadly, terrific, and I don't know whether my relative disappointment is due to a real falling-off in quality since the first three, or whether the novelty has simply worn off and it wasn't that good in the first place. But I've seen a lot of reactions to the newest episode similar to yours.

You are not alone!

DaninVan

So it's not just me(?)...
Over here on the other side of the pond, we get a lot of syndicated BBC productions. Last year's models, as it were.
I've definitely felt/noticed a deterioration in the storytelling as well as the acting. Sad; I really enjoy Brit TV.

David Thompson

The last episode of the previous serious was much better, I thought. Moriarty’s “game” was suitably alarming and sadistic and the poolside cliff-hanger was fun. But the first two episodes of series two have been underwhelming and bizarrely overhyped. The cliff-hanger from series one just… evaporated - waved aside with a phone call. And, as Mick says, there’s a lot of lazy writing, albeit with the odd amusing detail. At times it’s as though they’re throwing lots of bits in the air that don’t really add up to much and hoping it looks complex and coherent.

And a gag about “dogging” doesn’t quite make up for that.

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