I defy anyone with a heart who was paying attention not to be touched. Arnold and Price’s beautiful post-fall score transitioned wonderfully into the show’s theme music as a conflicted Sherlock watched a wrecked Watson walk away from his grave. Music-wise too we were served up a couple of treats, with a brief return to episode one’s Stayin’ Alive and Nina Simone’s Sinner Man galloping us apocalyptically through the pre-trial action. Haynes kept the episode as stylish as ever, from Sherlock’s characteristic text-on-screen storytelling, to the time-lapse cityscapes and the cool fashion ad pan across Moriarty on the rooftop. Sherlock and Moriarty’s confrontations were made all the more intense by Doctor Who director Toby Haynes’ still high-angles. Except you’re boring.” Speak for yourself, Jim. His behaviour at his subsequent trial was deliciously sociopathic, as was Sherlock’s for that matter, bearing out the truth in the classic antagonist’s line he utters to Holmes, “We’re just alike, you and I. Moriarty’s smartphone apps and skeleton key computer code turn out to be a red herring, him having achieved the break-ins not through electronic wizardry, but through good old-fashioned bribery and holding people to ransom. Then came Moriarty’s heist scenes, as the devilish mastermind channelled Gary Oldman in Leon by cracking his neck bones and air-conducting a symphony whilst committing the crime of the century. Thus the ‘fall’ of the episode’s title became both a literal plunge to his death and the figurative fall of Holmes’ reputation. The image nodded to the past versions of Holmes we’ve seen duelling with Moriarty against the backdrop of those Alpine falls, but as ever in Sherlock, was used to forge something new.Īs the case which made Holmes’ name, the word Reichenbach had become indissociable from Holmes himself, now known popularly as the Reichenbach hero. The episode’s title received an early mention as the camera floated past Turner’s The Great Falls of the Reichenbach, a stolen painting Holmes was being congratulated for having recovered. ![]() After the emotional pre-credits scene, things kicked off apace with a brisk, comic montage of Sherlock’s rise to celebrity before the action began proper. Moriarty takes advantage of his youth and deceptive lack of guile to act the gay IT technician or out-of-work children’s TV presenter one minute, then to glower with insanity and threaten to turn people into shoes the next. Scott’s Moriarty is brilliantly menacing, and all the more so because he’s cast against physical type. That’s not a given though, especially if series 3 follows the chronology-shifting example set by this episode. The Reichenbach Fall is by far the most we’ve seen of Moriarty, and judging from that surprise exit, likely to be the last we see of him too. Which leaves us with the third side of the triangle: Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty. ![]() Slipping between cold alien intellect and boyish smirk, delivering that gloriously Old Testament rooftop speech about shaking hands in hell, then bidding a bitterly charged farewell to Watson, this was comfortably Cumberbatch’s show-best performance. Ever the military man, bolt upright, mouth twitching, and struggling to disguise his pain, John Watson was heartbroken at the loss of his friend.īenedict Cumberbatch too, deserves a ton of praise for this week’s rattled, fearful, sad Sherlock. Those few pre-credits minutes in the psychiatrist’s chair and the graveside monologue were gorgeously acted. ![]() If Holmes isn’t dead though, why are we all crying?īecause of Martin Freeman, that’s why. Thanks to the wonderful Molly and her handy access to all those corpses, a switcheroo of sorts must have taken place between the rooftop and the pavement so Holmes could pull off the mother of all fake-outs. The Reichenbach Fall gives us another elegant update to past versions of the story, upping the action and emotional wallop of previous episodes to draw to a tearful conclusion now that Sherlock Holmes is dead.Įxcept no, he isn’t. ![]() What a way to bring this superlative series to a close.
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