XistentialAngst's Blog, page 29
December 29, 2016
Sherlock Season 4 Will Be “Big, Chewy,” and Darker than Ever
In Season 4 of Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch’s dashing detective comes up against a new, never-before-encountered adversary. After having outwitted several criminal masterminds, infiltrated a Chinese smuggling ring, uncovered a military conspiracy, foiled a terrorist plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and faked his own death, it may be his greatest challenge yet—a baby.
“It’s not Two Men, One Woman and a Baby,” series co-creator Mark Gatiss says of the arrival of John and Mary Watson’s child. “But we do have fun with it. The notion of Sherlock having to be around a baby is just funny and intriguing. Because he would approach it like a case. He would probably read up on it and think, I can do this. But babies aren’t logical.”
Gatiss adds: “But it’s not suddenly some sort of rom com.” He pauses for a moment. “That’s Episode 2.”
That’s a joke—although the creators of Sherlock aren’t averse to barefaced deception. Speaking to Vanity Fair last year in the lead-up to the Sherlock Christmas special, “The Abominable Bride,” Gatiss and fellow show-runner Steven Moffat encouraged the assumption that the episode, set in 19th-century London, was a one-off, stand-alone affair, separate from the series proper.
The truth was slightly more complicated. Much of “The Abominable Bride” turned out to be taking place in Sherlock’s drug-induced imagination, and the “stand-alone special” in fact stood very much alongside the “regular” episodes. It was an elaborate hoax culminating in a meta-twist worthy of a show about fiction’s most celebrated sleuth.
“We lied to you,” Gatiss admits, more gleeful than apologetic.
It helps that Gatiss has the sincere-seeming “soft, precise fashion of speech” originally ascribed to the criminal mastermind Moriarty. A certain amount of cunning comes with the territory: perhaps inevitably for a show awhirl with ingenious riddles and mysteries, Sherlock has inspired a following of would-be detectives obsessed with picking up clues and unraveling the show’s secrets.
Gatiss, who also stars on the show as Sherlock’s brainier brother Mycroft, is determined not only to outwit the Sherlock sleuths, but to also confound the expectations of those who know the old stories. “It’s such a spoilery age,” he says. “People demand things all the time. But, genuinely, if you gave it to them, they’d be disappointed. It’s so wonderful if you can maintain it. It’s marvelous to keep your secrets.”
Among the mysteries fans are currently salivating over is the hinted existence of a third Holmes sibling, possibly named Sherrinford (Gatiss: “Well. We’ll see. The clues are there …”), and the nature of the posthumous return of Sherlock’s arch-nemesis. (“Moriarty is dead,” Gatiss insists, adding, “More importantly, Sherlock knows exactly what he’s going to do next.”)
Spoilers aside, there’ll be the usual astonishments in store in Sherlock Season 4, whose three 90-minute episodes—“The Six Thatchers,” “The Lying Detective,” and “The Final Problem”—will air weekly in the U.S. from January 1 on Masterpiece on PBS. The last episode lifts its title from the original story in which the Sherlock Holmes character was killed off, plummeting off the Reichenbach Falls; the earliest promotional image for the season was of a violin with one of its strings broken.
What’s certain is that the series will feature a new villain in (played by Toby Jones), whom Gatiss has described as “purest evil.”
“The danger with anyone other than Moriarty is you run the risk of them appearing as a diluted version,” he says. “Thus our other villains are very different: Magnussen was a businessman in the Murdoch vein—not evil as far he’s concerned. Just totally amoral. Culverton Smith is different again—you’ll have to wait and see!—but very much a man of these strange, rootless, dark times. What can you not do if you have power?”
Sherlock interacting with the Watson baby promises to be some light relief from what is shaping up to be a more serious and somber fourth season, one that has an “epic scale.” Cumberbatch has called it, approvingly, “myopically dark.”
“What’s very exciting about these three episodes is to really play the repercussions of the last season,” says Gatiss. “There are lots of things that come to fruition this season which we have been seeding for a while. We knew we were going to get here. And, with the things that we’ve been planning, the darkness was sort of inevitable. They’re not things that could have happened any time, and where we get to is a very different place to where we’ve been before. He said, elliptically.”
Even Sherlock, the self-described high-functioning sociopath, continues to develop and evolve from episode to episode. “Sherlock isn’t the same man as when we first encountered him,” says Gatiss. “Sherlock can never be ‘one of us.’ His appeal lies in his otherness. He says things we can’t, sees things we can’t. But we don’t like him if he’s a total prick. We want to believe he can learn from his mistakes and become better at it. Or at least better at seeming like a human being.”
Gatiss also revealed that the season will revisit and elaborate on scenes from the past. “There’s quite a few things that we have retro-engineered to make us look more clever. It’s like a ridiculous tradition now, having to remount something which we shot two years ago.”
Since the third Sherlock season aired in 2014, Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, who plays John Watson, have starred together in the third Hobbit movie, trod the boards in separate Shakespeare stage productions in the U.K., and been conscripted into the Marvel Universe. The three new episodes, Gatiss promises, are worthy of in-demand actors at the apex of their careers. The unique format of the show—long intervals between seasons of three 90-minute episodes each—strongly dictates that there are no “throwaway” or inconsequential episodes.
“If you’re doing movie-length episodes, you can’t just do a ‘story of the week,’ ” says Gatiss. “If we’d done our original plan of six hour-long episodes a season, maybe by now we would have done one where Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade take over for a week, you know—that sort of thing. Because you can. But when you do 90-minute episodes that come out every couple of years, you have to think what you can throw at the characters which makes it a story worth telling.
“Everybody, particularly Benedict and Martin, responded so well to the material,” says Gatiss. “Everyone’s on their top form, and they kind of relished it. This is big, chewy stuff.”
I love that they’re going to revisit past scenes. I seriously hope we get Mary/sniper at the pool and other Mary set-up scenes, and possibly Sherlock realizing John’s early interest in him as well. Exciting!
consultingeastwind:
marcespot:
loudest-subtext-in-tv:
ifyouarelookingforbabynames:
loudest-subte...
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I think my favorite Martin expression in the entire show is the one right after Sholto says from behind the door, “Mr. Holmes, you and I are similar, I think.”
It’s one of the most damning expressions in the show, like… why would he make THAT face if it were just a statement of how Sherlock and Sholto are platonically similar? Most people just think it’s neat when their friends meet each other and realize they’re similar, but John’s face is just like, “HAH THIS IS REALLY MY FUCKING LIFE, I WILL NEVER ESCAPE”
THERE IT IS. THERE IT FUCKING IS
YES THANKS I LOVE THIS. I’ve always read John as “Why do I have to fall for Drama Queens?!” And John instantly leaves to give Sherlock the space with Sholto! You know, let the ones who TRULY know him talk… NOT MARY.
This bit is just priceless. And it blows my mind how casuals are blind to it.
No escape, John.
yorkiepug:
mylastvow:
heurtebizzz:
These are the examples of...
These are the examples of the ‘official’ John Watson characterisation, from Sherlock: The Casebook (first two images) and Sherlock Chronicles. In every one of them, John is described as ‘loyal’, ‘decent’, ‘reliable’, etc. Add to this at least two times he’s been called ‘loyal’ in the series (by Moriarty in TGG and by Mary in the TST promo clip) and Martin Freeman’s ‘funny, strong, loyal’ as the three words that describe John in the next series (from a recent interview). What the creators have been saying so far is this: loyalty is one defining quality of John Watson.
Yet, at the same time, we’ve heard that there’s something shocking revealed about John in TST. And that his ‘moral pole goes a bit off’ as he’s faced with ‘temptation and guilt’. Frankly, I don’t know what to make of it and what to fear most. I sort of suspected that John’s loyalty should not be taken for granted and his turning out to be not as loyal as we thought might be one of the rug pulls we’ve been promised. But, then, I wonder what are the clues pointing out in such a direction and how is it that we all collectively missed them. I do have trust in the writers and hope that whatever the shocking revelation about John is, it will be consistent with his characterisation throughout the series and not just a bad writing for the sake of cheap sensationalism.
I guess that was a long and convoluted way of stating that I really can’t imagine John suddenly turning out a habitual cheater or an evil mastermind. I have seen other speculations on the matter and, not to say that there are certain things Mofitss would never do (how would I know), but there are things John as we know him would not do.
Well first of all… ALL OF THE ABOVE!!!
I’ve been wracking my mind the last few days about this. What does it mean that John’s
'moral pole goes a bit off’? What is it that John is tempted with or feels guilty about? And most importantly: Will it still be John? Will it be consistent with his characterisation so far… and I admit I was starting to be a bit scared about what they might do with our brave and loyal John..
… but then another thought came to mind: Will John be portrait as less loyal, less of a moral compass, guilty of whatever moral misconduct he will be tempted with in the eyes of the casual viewer or in our eyes??? Because I think there is an important difference in the perceiption of the casual viewers and in our perceiption…
Let me give you one example: The forgiveness scene in HLV
I, personally, still do not believe he really forgave Mary in that scene, as I did not interprete that scene as ‘forgiving’. But I am convinved - no, I know, that other people believe he forgave her. In my eyes John would never forgive someone who shoot his best friend that easily and certainly not with THAT speech. Other viewers might have just shrugged and went on watching, while I kept coming back to that scene because it felt somehow off, wrong…
Another example can be found it numerous fan fics, where John cheated on Mary…. with Sherlock of course, or where John acts disloyal towards Mary in various other ways, but I never once read a fan fic in which John betrays Sherlock.
So, I keep asking myself, if what they are referring to in the interviews as John being less loyal or morally dubious means that he will act against Sherlock or Mary. And for the life of me I cannot see him acting against Sherlock, but him acting against Mary might be a ‘rug pull’ for the casual viewer?!? Seeing as they also spent a lot of time promoting the ‘happy Watson family’ .
I’m really hoping the whole thing pertains to John going after Mary for all her crimes, and maybe using some morally dubious methods and/or working with Mycroft. I really can’t wrap my head around what else would be such a big “rug pull” for John, without being soap-operay or just plain awful.
Yes, I hope what people see as betrayal is about John taking Mary down and nothing to do with Sherlock. That just would be too OOC.
marcespot:
loudest-subtext-in-tv:
ifyouarelookingforbabynames:
loudest-subtext-in-tv:
I think...
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I think my favorite Martin expression in the entire show is the one right after Sholto says from behind the door, “Mr. Holmes, you and I are similar, I think.”
It’s one of the most damning expressions in the show, like… why would he make THAT face if it were just a statement of how Sherlock and Sholto are platonically similar? Most people just think it’s neat when their friends meet each other and realize they’re similar, but John’s face is just like, “HAH THIS IS REALLY MY FUCKING LIFE, I WILL NEVER ESCAPE”
THERE IT IS. THERE IT FUCKING IS
YES THANKS I LOVE THIS. I’ve always read John as “Why do I have to fall for Drama Queens?!” And John instantly leaves to give Sherlock the space with Sholto! You know, let the ones who TRULY know him talk… NOT MARY.
This bit is just priceless. And it blows my mind how casuals are blind to it.
welovethebeekeeper:
Given the incoming reviews, plus the official released promo material, I went...
Given the incoming reviews, plus the official released promo material, I went back through my setlock archive, and Ruther2′s Storify to see if anything jumped out at me regarding the end of TST and the story that follows on in TLD.
First of all I want to say that we may be being led to focus on the first two episodes in order to diminish the rug pulls and plot conclusions in TFP. Steven has said that TFP rivals ASiB as a standout episode. Just keep in mind that we may have a bit of manipulation in play. Secondly I am going to use spoilers in this post, ones not released to the public via the media. So I will continue under the cut.
Yeah, I’m onboard with all this!
December 28, 2016
bilbo-baggins-is-fantastic:Martin Freeman looking soft while...
Martin Freeman looking soft while holding an adorable baby
To me this is a good hint to expect parentlock. Would they show us Rosie like this? (her face, John bonding with her) and then kill her off? They could, but it would be pretty harsh. Also, even if she ends up being some other man’s child, John will have bonded with her and might raise her anyway.
monikakrasnorada:
isitandwonder:
johnlocklives:
roadswewalk:
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First three images look familiar to you? My memory, search, and hacking skills are all failing me.
EDIT: Top right is John Hamish two-shirts-DGAF Watson. Arms crossed like his promo pic. Where’s that crack fic when I need it.
Ah,that blew up. Again. Sorry for the delay - I really wasn’t sure if they were new, didn’t hear anything for a while after I posted, then fell asleep. It’s just this small profile montage from the cast page at KBS’.tiny site. (Sherlock’s pictures are close-ups of his face.)
Tags to who messaged me; sorry, can’t track down everyone who reblogged:
@sherlocksbestfriend-john, @marcespot, @marcelock
Ya’ll want my search skills but not my jokes, eh. :’( j/k have fun. My “korean content” tag is just for my purposes, by the way - don’t be expecting OCN-type stuff from that…
Check that page there’s more!
John is on a train or plane in the above left? Well, we were told they would be going places in TST…
My bet, he’s gone after AGRA.
isitandwonder:
simpleanddestructivechemistry:
gingerhermit:
happierstill:
johnnlocked:
waitingfo...
simpleanddestructivechemistry:
I have no idea what’s going on here but I like it.
*pulls up a chair and grabs a bag of popcorn* Don’t mind us.
*joining in with the chair and popcorn*
Keep going!
Calamity strikes: New season tests Sherlock and Watson
The game is afoot yet again in the fourth season of Sherlock, but so is complete catastrophe.
The clever and adventurous series takes a definite turn for the worse — for all of its major characters — in the next three-episode round of the PBS Masterpiece series.
“It doesn’t lose the humor, but it still goes to places that I think are darker than we’ve gone to before, for all of us,” says Martin Freeman, who stars as devoted assistant John Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s British detective Sherlock Holmes.
As Sunday’s premiere begins, Sherlock’s “got his mojo back,” says co-creator Mark Gatiss. He’s coming out of a drug-induced stupor to figure out how arch-villain Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott) is cyber-taunting him from the grave, and now Sherlock is “high on life.”
He happily takes a new workload of cases with John and his wife Mary (Amanda Abbington), who’ve just had a baby. But a rash of thefts involving a bust of Margaret Thatcher brings Mary’s sinister past as an assassin to the fore, leading to deadly ramifications.
“It’s always exciting to play stuff that is thrilling and dangerous and dramatic and funny, and I think that’s what Mary is,” says Abbington.
The harrowing climax in Sunday’s premiere leads to massive emotional fallout that threatens to create a permanent divide between Sherlock and John. “Their friendship is tested to the ultimate,“ Abbington says. “If they can survive this, then they will actually survive anything.”
The situation is particularly trying for Sherlock, who’s evolved over the course of the series from eccentric recluse to having friends and even getting along with his brother Mycroft (Gatiss).
“He’s never going to be like the rest of us. It’s just he has developed. He has learned to a greater or lesser extent how to do human,” Gatiss says. “It was always Mycroft and his upbringing that taught him to eliminate emotion from his life. He’s becoming bonded with people and is slightly devastated by the consequences.”
Watson is also in for a change, from the show’s “stable, reliable, solid rock” to a man dealing with temptation and guilt, Freeman says. “It’s good to have that moral compass go off pole a little bit.”
Toby Jones guest stars as bad guy Culverton Smith in the second episode, titled “The Lying Detective” that’s based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story “The Dying Detective.” Freeman says Smith rivals Moriarty as the worst person Sherlock’s encountered.
“It’s generally the darkest episode we’ve done, and Toby is very, very scary,” Gatiss says.
The season finale “really does hit you behind the eyes,” says Abbington. “The Final Problem” marks the first time the show has used a canonical Doyle title — the original 1893 story, in which the author first killed the genius detective.
“It’s a great title and it has the requisite air of doom,” Gatiss teases.
So should fans wonder about Sherlock’s fate?
“Everyone should worry, shouldn’t they?” Gatiss says with a laugh. “I think we should all be worried.”
Calamity strikes: New season tests Sherlock and Watson
Uhoh - I don’t like these bits:
The harrowing climax in Sunday’s premiere leads to massive emotional fallout that threatens to create a permanent divide between Sherlock and John.
Watson is also in for a change, from the show’s “stable, reliable, solid rock” to a man dealing with temptation and guilt, Freeman says. “It’s good to have that moral compass go off pole a little bit.”
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