REVIEW: Sherlock, Series 1 Episode Three 'The Great Game'

 REVIEW: Sherlock, Series 1 Episode Three 'The Great Game'

There's a reason why people talk of the 'Moriarty to Sherlock Holmes'. Moriarty is a literary figure that has come to resemble the archetype for a primary antagonist in a piece of media. He's a representation of the idea that your protagonist's greatest foe is the shadow of yourself, and that the greatest enemy is the person who displays the opposite of who you could have become.

Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's Sherlock is one that demonstrates a perfect understanding of this idea. 'The Great Game' sees Moriarty (Andrew Scott) task Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) with solving a series of mysteries within a given time frame. Failure to find the answers means that Moriarty will blow up a series of hostages who he has tied up with explosives. Like Sherlock, Moriarty does what he does because he's 'bored', and he gets a gleeful pleasure out of these horrific situations. What separates the pair, however, is their attitudes to everyday people. Sherlock does what he does to help people, whereas Moriarty has no qualms about murder. He's a sadistic and cold-hearted 'consulting criminal', and it truly feels like watching 'the evil Sherlock Holmes'.

He's also shown to be this mysterious presence, which works well for the narrative. We don't actually meet Moriarty in person until seven minutes before the episode ends, and when the blind hostage (Rita Davies) reveals too much about her kidnapper he even has her killed. This does a great job at creating this air of enigma around this version of Moriarty, and making us more invested as a viewer in seeing who this new take on Moriarty is. We are intrigued purely because he doesn't want to be seen.

When we finally meet him, the encounter between Sherlock and his famous arch nemesis does not disappoint. The meeting takes place at a swimming pool, which is a setting that always works considerably well for confrontation scenes given its imposing nature, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott have such great chemistry from the off. They bounce off each other with considerable ease, giving the impression of two intellectual equals finally coming together at last.

It's a shocking moment also when Watson steps out of the shadows in the swimming pool, bombs strapped around his body. It's quite a cruel and cold-hearted move of Moriarty to use Sherlock's assistant in this way, almost as though he is toying with Sherlock and playing with his emotions. It's the perfect way to show just how disturbed an individual Moriarty is; he is a man who will use any means at his disposal to play with Sherlock's mind.

It's clever too how this episode ties into the first of the series, 'A Study In Pink'. Not only do we hear in this episode that John Watson has blogged about their first case under the name of the title episode, but Moriarty's hostages also deliver their messages through an exact replica of the phone from the episode. It's really neat having a finale here which has such strong links to the opener; it gives a real sense of cohesiveness that makes the first series feel like a continuing story, rather than fully standalone cases. It also makes total sense, as the taxi driver in the first episode directly mentioned Moriarty by name, and so he clearly had some level of involvement in his crime.

Sherlock and Mycroft's (Mark Gatiss) brotherly feud comes into play once again here, and this is personally one of my favourite parts of Sherlock. I love their dynamic, and the fact that Sherlock will refuse to investigate a case purely because it happens to be his brother who requests his involvement. It creates some great laughs both here and throughout the show's run, whilst also highlighting their similarities as siblings.

Overall, The Great Game is a fantastic finale to Sherlock's very first series. It offers our first satisfying glimpse at Moriarty, a string of intriguing mysteries and yet more entertaining Sherlock/Mycroft moments, whilst also featuring some very cool call-backs to the very first episode of the series. It's an episode that both successfully resolves the first series and provides the set-up for future episodes in the show's run, and demonstrates the strong writing capabilities of Mark Gatiss. This is a screenwriter who very clearly should be a future showrunner of Doctor Who.

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What are your thoughts on Sherlock's third episode? Let me know in the comments.