Egging the Pudding

In a recent feature in the Sunday Times, Mark Gatiss - co-creator and writer of Sherlock - explained what he thought was the central appeal of the series:

“We discovered, quite early on, that what people loved the most is the interaction between the two characters,” adds Gatiss. “It is a bromance. You can’t deny it."

Series 3 of the programme, which has just finished, has come in for a fair amount of criticism: too jokey, insufficient detection, insufficient mystery. I didn't mind the change of tone and suspect the complexities and subtleties in all three episodes will benefit from a second viewing. But Sherlock has a more fundamental problem and it's one that has bedevilled detective series before.

Most of the great TV detectives are cut from similar cloth. A troubled or complicated personal life/back story rubbing alongside the solving of (usually) murder mysteries. It takes a delicate touch to egg the pudding of the detective story with just enough personality to lift the programme out of the mundane whodunnit and into interesting drama.

Gatiss is right to say that the interaction between Holmes and Watson is at the heart of what makes Sherlock so successful. But their relationship is so much more interesting when seen through the prism of a tightly plotted story than when the story becomes about the relationship.

This isn't unique to Sherlock. Inspector Morse was at its finest in its early series when the drinking, the thwarted passion, the essential loneliness of Morse underpinned rather than overwhelmed the plot. The later episodes were operatic and stylish and beautifully written but they were about Morse: the mystery was employed in the service of Morse's character when it should have been the other way round.

And so with Sherlock. In placing the relationship between Holmes and Watson at the centre of the programme the writers have lost the subtelty, the nuance that came from allowing the stories to shed light on the characters. Solving mysteries is the reason these characters are on the screen. Take that element away and Sherlock becomes a formulaic buddy movie and Morse an Alan Bennett-lite study of ageing and loneliness with John Thaw in the Thora Hird role.

As so often, the Danes have it right. For all the focus on Sarah Lund and her jumpers in The Killing, each series was driven by a relentless, old fashioned, edge-of-the-seat story. Lund's character was revealed through her reaction to events; she never became the story. And when, at the end of series 3, she did become the story, they simply stopped.

I hope Sherlock doesn't stop as there's a lot more to be done with a brilliantly realised idea. I just hope that what caused Gatiss and Moffat to fall in love with these characters in the first place - the stories of Conan Doyle - return to centre stage.