If you’re reading this tonight, Sunday night October 24, you still have time to get to your TV and set your DVR for this show: Sherlock on PBS.
Masterpiece Mystery: Sherlock (trailer)
And if you are reading this Monday or later and missed it, you can catch one of the many repeats. Which you’ll want to do, so you’re set for the next two Sundays, when episodes 2 and 3 are broadcast. Or in the worst case, preorder the DVDs.
This new Sherlock series is amazing. It was produced by the BBC and broadcast over the summer in Britain. I watched it via (illegal) YouTube uploads, 15 minutes to a segment, the moment they were available. Clever, fast-paced, funny, suspenseful, high-stakes, beautifully shot and edited, with characters that you like instantly and care about.
My friend Christina, who clued me in before the BBC’s original broadcast so I’d be on the lookout for it on the Internets, described Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes as the “adorable bastard child of Doctor Who and Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.” This is just about right, assuming that child had been raised by Gregory House.
Please watch and tell me what you think of the show. Then let’s all band together to get the BBC and PBS to show future episodes in a much more timely manner. Three months’ delay is far too a wait for great television.
I’ve watched it all three times it’s been on since Sunday.