I have a problem with Sherlock. There are many, many things I love about this show, not least Benedict Cumberbatch, an Alan Rickman for the new generation, and the many facial expressions of Martin Freeman. This is Conan Doyle updated, Sherlock for the twenty-first century.
Adventurous and different, except where it isn’t.
First episode: a woman is on the phone to a man, a man she’s having an affair with.
(Spoilers. Serious spoilers.)
We next see a police conference with his wife declaiming what a wonderful man he is. The next woman is decrying another’s dancing. Dancing woman is murdered, too. The next woman is the token black woman. She’s bitchy and calls Sherlock freak, as though they were still at school. Next woman; a serial adulterer, murdered. Oh, and we get to learn that the bitchy black woman is having an affair with another bitchy but male police officer. Then there’s the forensic doctor in the lab, who has a huge crush on Sherlock, in fact to such a degree that it overwhelms her intellect entirely.
There is a woman in this story who Sherlock thinks is smart—the murdered serial adulterer. Witness that she had multiple lovers, and none of them knew she was married! That’s what it takes to demonstrate your intellectual chops, girls. Remember that in future. It’s not your job, or your achievements, it’s running multiple men for sex, rather like that woman with all the dogs in Trumpton. And Anthea. What is she? A woman who texts with her thumbs from one end of the day to the other, and completely and vapidly fails to recognize Watson, who she’d picked up and delivered to her boss earlier that evening.
The second episode started hopefully, with a young Chinese woman in what looked to be a major role. But it turns out that she’s running away, from her life as a drug mule and from her brother. When he arrives she makes no attempt to save herself, just lets him kill her, in a tribute to that well-known cliché, All Chinese women are passive, even unto death. And bitchy black policewoman is still bitchy. [Please note the use of bitch is heavy on the irony.]
At least the bad guy in this episode turns out to be a woman. Except once again, she’s not really doing anything; just setting into motion a rather nasty crossbow contraption, and ordering her henchmen to do stuff. Oh, and Doctor Watson’s doctor girlfriend gets to simper at him, then be tied to a chair and scream behind a gag while Watson and Holmes try to rescue her. (Just tip the damn chair over, woman!) And finally, the murdered banker’s been sexing with his PA; Sherlock spotted that because he gave her hand cream, which she keeps on her desk in a bank, like all professional women do. And when he tells her the value of the hair pin she doesn’t say ‘You’re joking’, like most women would; she screams, leaps up from her chair and staggers about in some weird version of what women do when they get a shock.
Third episode: Woman kidnapped and wrapped up in Semtex, gets to cry down the phone. Wife of bankruptcy-avoidant husband, pretending she thinks he’s dead (badly). Dead woman, spent her time selling cosmetics on television (after all, she is a woman). Old woman, also crying down phone. Fiancée of murdered man, crying, and telling Watson that she just knew he wasn’t a traitor. For a moment there I had hopes for Mrs Wenceslas, but even she was just a pawn in Moriarty’s game. Black policewoman is still bitchy, forensic scientist is still ditzy and unable to get a man.
Oh, and Mrs Hudson, who could have been a strong foil to the infuriating antics of Holmes and Watson, thinks a drugs bust is because she takes herbal soothers for her hip, and is cool with homosexuality because her friend next door has ‘got married ones’ lodging there.
All of which left me thinking, if this is the Sherlock for the 21st century, then why not have a Lestrade as a woman? Or even Watson? We have a token nod to gay acceptance with Watson’s sister as a lesbian, a relationship that’s so far kept firmly off screen. I won’t deny that many of the characters described here added their share of comic moments to the story. But I waited in vain for one single meaningful female role, one single developed female character, something to leaven the hypermasculine script. One ethnic minority character that’s more than a cardboard cut-out. One LBGT character (or mention of one) for more than comedy laughs.
But this seems to be Moffat, and the people he surrounds himself with. People so soaked in white, masculine, straight culture that they can make an entire series set in London in the 21st century and give no meaningful role to someone who is female, non-white or non-cis-gendered.
After seeing the dog’s bollocks he’s made of female roles in Dr Who I shouldn’t be surprised. But I will continue to watch Sherlock because I think Cumberbatch is brilliant – his uncertainty when he makes the remark about the 14-year stillbirth:
‘Not good?’
‘No. Not good.’
– or in meeting the banker who’d once been a bullying student contemporary, were superb. He doesn’t care about the subjects he gets wrong, but he cares about his failures being public, probably because it echoes past cruelties. He’s not just driven by his own genius, but by a need not to give anyone any leverage for mockery. His realization that Watson won’t take advantage of those moments, at the end of the first episode, is the first moment of genuine warmth between them. Watson is safe because Holmes will always figure out the answer. Holmes is safe because Watson will never laugh at him.
All auties will likely recognize those awful moments when you make a crashing faux-pas that no ‘normal’ person would ever make. And most of us probably long for a friend who recognizes our talents, keeps us pointed in the right direction, and never, ever laughs at our failures.
May we all, one day, find our John Watson.
Shout out to nominatissima, who put me on to Sherlock.
Your reading of his relationship with Watson is brilliant. I keep hoping to find my own Watson some day as well, though my girlfriend (also autistic) and I bounce off each other nicely.
It would be lovely if there were less slut-shaming and more fleshed out woman characters, if they screw up The Woman of the Sherlock universe with the adaptation of A Scandal in Bohemia, I will be very upset.
I’ve been out in the garden today, weeding and thinking about Sherlock. It strikes me that the series so far actually has a lot to say about bullying, and there’s probably a whole other post in that thought.
I’m usually really bad at body language, but watch Cumberbatch as he meets the banker at the start of episode two. There’s that instantly recognisable watchfulness of a victim when encountering a bully. His restless energy, his curiosity just vanishes. His decision not to tell the truth about how he knew the man had made two round-the-world trips – that recognition that to do so will just invite hatred and scorn – is very telling.
Totally agree with 99% of this (although I do really like both Sally and Molly – I just think their characters need more space and development. In fact, I think Sally’s bitchiness might be comprehensible if she were given more of a backstory)
With Anthea, I thought she did recognise him, she was just pretending not to, to give him the brush-off, but I could be wrong.
I loved your analysis of the Sherlock/John symbiotic relationship. The vulnerability Cumberbatch brings to the character is, IMO, incredible.
Sexism aside, I don’t think Moffatt gets the character of Sherlock right either. For example, his constant spiteful comments to Molly. I don’t remember the Sherlock of the books being so cruel. Superior? Yes. Dismissive? Yes. Aloof? Yes. But not spiteful and nasty. Watson fairs even less well – from chivalrous loyal friend in the books to becoming a man who has so many girlfriends he can’t remember the name of the current one and apparently exists just to tell Sherlock how amazing he is. Maybe Moffatt’s apparent sexism is just purely a symptom of bad writing.
Moffatt has added nothing to the character of Sherlock that hasn’t already been done a hell of a lot better in the Granada series or the very excellent reimagining in the Murder Room series. In fact, if anything, he’s degraded it.
Honestly, being a huge fan of the books, if it wasn’t for the marvellous Benedict Cumberbatch, I wouldn’t watch this at all.
Yes, I thought the spite was out of character, too. And it can’t be excused on the grounds that Sherlock ‘notices things’, he picks up on things that are relevant, and whether a woman has gained weight or is wearing lipstick isn’t relevant to anything he’s interested in. If he’s going to make remarks that upset people for the sake of fleshing out the character, then the remark about the stillbirth was much more revealing.
You are so right – wearing lipstick and women gaining weight is irrelevant to Sherlock if it has no relevance to the crime he is solving. In the books he makes reference to his “brain attic” and says that he’s very careful what he stores there.
In Conan-Doyle’s books, Sherlock is a remarkable, strange person, admired because of his single-mindedness for solving crime and his ability to notices things and make connections that others can’t see. In The Final Problem, Watson says he is “the best and wisest man whom I have ever known.” I can’t imagine anyone saying that about Moffat’s Sherlock because Moffat writes him as if he’s an antisocial “freak” (Moffat’s words), merely to be tolerated by the people around him rather than respected and admired. When I read the books, I find Sherlock to be an incredibly fascinating character – I watch Moffat’s Sherlock and all I’m thinking is what a dick he is. The essence of the character (and, likewise, all the other characters – Watson, Adler, et al) is just missing.