Sherlock: The Sign of Three
by Stephen Thompson, Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss; dir. Colm McCarthy (BBC, 2014)
Possibly the funniest of all Sherlock episodes, albeit skewed beyond the pale towards character development and adapting little of its plot from Conan Doyle’s stories. While Benedict Cumberbatch brings Sherlock’s misanthropy painfully centre-stage, Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington are more humanly sublime.
Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall
by Stephen Thompson; dir. Toby Haynes (BBC, 2012)
Another clever (if frenetic) script, reworking Conan Doyle’s ‘The Final Problem’ and cramming a whole series of character arcs into one episode. While Andrew Scott (Moriarty) positively steals the show, Rupert Graves (Lestrade) proves subtly effective, grounding the mad turn of events.
Sherlock: The Blind Banker
by Stephen Thompson; dir. Euros Lyn (BBC, 2010)
Not as quirky as episodes written by Moffat or Gatiss. The mystery is relatively straightforward and its pursuit mundane (within Holmes’s preternatural range). Not a bad thing, though it does rather feel like a stretched-out 60-minute story. Zoe Telford is good value.