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"The Great Game" is the third episode of the television series Sherlock. It was first broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 8 August 2010.

Plot

Sherlock Holmes criticises an accused murderer's grammar and refuses to help him, and thus is bored and lacking a case. John Watson has revealed on his blog that Sherlock has no understanding of astronomy. John, at his girlfriend's apartment, hears of an explosion on Baker Street. He rushes to find Sherlock and his brother Mycroft apparently unaffected. Mycroft wants Sherlock to investigate the murder of MI6 employee Andrew West. West was found dead on a railway line, and an important flash drive is missing. Sherlock refuses the case.

Sherlock is called to Scotland Yard. There, he is given a phone like that of the murder victim in "A Study in Pink". It plays five Greenwich pips and displays a photo of the basement flat of Sherlock's and John's building. There is a pair of trainers in the flat. A terrified woman, obviously reading a message from a third party, telephones. If Sherlock does not solve the puzzle in 12 hours, the explosive vest she is wearing will be detonated. Sherlock believes the five pips mean that he will be required to solve five challenges.

Sherlock and John examine the trainers. They are interrupted by Molly Hooper, a lab technician with feelings for Sherlock. She introduces her new boyfriend Jim, an IT employee; Sherlock deduces that Jim is gay, and tells her. The shoes belonged to a schoolboy named Carl Powers, who had drowned. Sherlock, underage at the time, had been interested in the case, but unable to convince the police. He solves it from clues left on the trainers: Carl Powers was poisoned via his eczema medication. The booby-trapped woman is freed.

A second message shows a sportscar, stained with blood. Another hostage gives Sherlock 8 hours to solve the mystery. The card of a rental agency is in the glove box. The agency owner has a distinct suntan and was recently in Colombia, and the blood in the car had been previously frozen, so Sherlock concludes that the lost man, Ian Monkford, paid the agency owner to help him disappear. Once again, the hostage is freed. Sherlock is convinced that his battle of wits is with the mysterious Moriarty, named by the killer in "A Study in Pink".

Next, Sherlock investigates the death of Connie Prince from tetanus. Supposedly, she cut herself on a nail, but the wound was made after her death. A blind woman calls, giving Holmes 12 hours in which to solve the crime. Sherlock pins the crime on the housekeeper, who murdered Prince by increasing her botox injections. Although Sherlock solves the puzzle in time, the bomber triggers the explosives when the hostage starts describing her kidnapper's voice.

A photograph of the River Thames is fourth. Sherlock finds the corpse of a security guard there. A pair of bruises on the body are trademarks of "the Golem", an assassin. The guard had realised that a recently discovered painting by Vermeer was a fake. An astronomy professor had talked to the victim about the painting, and is also targeted by the Golem. While Sherlock and John fail to save her life, they find a clue to prove the painting is a fake, saving a fourth victim. The museum curator tells Sherlock that the person ultimately in charge was called Moriarty.

Investigating Mycroft's Andrew West case on his own, John is puzzled to hear that little blood was found on the tracks. Sherlock agrees that West was killed elsewhere, then dumped on the roof of a train. They confront West's prospective brother-in-law, who confesses that he stole the flash drive and accidentally killed West.

Sherlock waits for John to go out and then arranges to meet Moriarty. He is met instead by John, who appears to taunt him before revealing that he is another hostage, wearing an explosive vest and having his words dictated. Moriarty shows up and turns out to be Molly's boyfriend Jim. John grabs him, but lets go when a sniper aims at Sherlock. Moriarty leaves momentarily but soon returns, having multiple snipers target both Sherlock and John. Sherlock aims his handgun at Moriarty, but then changes his aim to the explosive vest, which he had thrown across the pool deck. The episode ends on this cliffhanger.

Sources and allusions

• Holmes and Watson's discussion about astronomy and knowledge comes from A Study in Scarlet.
• The Andrew West case comes from "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", in which the victim is called Arthur Cadogan West; the idea of the culprit being the brother of the victim's fiancée appears in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty".
• The pink mobile phone receives messages with Greenwich Pips, with their numbers decreasing with each message, pointing towards "The Five Orange Pips".
• The investigation of the death of Connie Prince resembles "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman" especially Watson's idea about masking tetanus with calcium hypochlorite on the cat's paws and Holmes reading internet forums to gather information about the TV star relatives.
• The conversation between Holmes and Moriarty in the final scene mirrors and quotes the confrontation in Holmes' study in "The Adventure of the Final Problem".
• The "thick Bohemian paper" comes from "A Scandal in Bohemia".
• Sherlock's statement "I'd be lost without my blogger" echoes his "I am lost without my Boswell" from "A Scandal in Bohemia".
• Holmes's "Homeless network" who help him locate the Golem are referred to as his "eyes and ears all over the city", similar to the Baker Street Irregulars, who appear in many of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
• Sherlock's random gunfire at the start of the episode and the holes left in the wall is a reference to The Musgrave Ritual, in which "Holmes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an armchair... and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks"

Production

According to the DVD commentary, "The Great Game" was the first episode of Sherlock to be produced after the BBC accepted the series. The series was filmed in reverse order because co-creator Steven Moffat, the writer of the first episode "A Study in Pink", was busy with the fifth series of Doctor Who.

Andrew Scott made his first appearance as Jim Moriarty in "The Great Game". Moffat said, "We knew what we wanted to do with Moriarty from the very beginning. Moriarty is usually a rather dull, rather posh villain so we thought someone who was genuinely properly frightening. Someone who's an absolute psycho". Moffat and Gatiss were originally not going to put a confrontation between Moriarty and Sherlock into the first three episodes, but realised that they "just had to do a confrontation scene. We had to do a version of the scene in 'The Final Problem' in which the two arch-enemies meet each other."

Sherlock's residence at 221B Baker Street was filmed at 185 North Gower Street. Baker Street was impractical because of heavy traffic, and the number of things labelled "Sherlock Holmes", which would need to be disguised. The laboratory used by Sherlock was filmed at Cardiff University School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

"The Great Game" was partly set in a disused sewage works.

Broadcast and reception

"The Great Game" was first broadcast on BBC One on 8 August 2010. Overnight figures had been watched by 7.34 million viewers on BBC One and BBC HD, a 31.3% audience share. Final viewing figures rose to 9.18 million.

Chris Tilly of IGN rated "The Great Game" a 9.5 out of 10, describing it as "gripping from start to finish". Of Moriarty's appearance, he said it "didn't disappoint either, the villain of the piece being unlike any incarnation of the character yet seen on screen". He also praised the writing, saying, "Credit should go to writer Mark Gatiss, his script the perfect combination of classic Conan Doyle storytelling with modern-day plot devices and humour, creating a sophisticated mystery that was the perfect marriage of old and new.", and the performances of Cumberbatch and Freeman. John Teti, writing for The A.V. Club, awarded the episode an A- and called it an "extraordinarily dense 90 minutes". He further singled out Andrew Scott for praise, writing that his "portrayal of Moriarty is a thrilling departure from earlier incarnations of the man." The Guardian's Sam Wollaston was optimistic for the programme, describing it as "smart, exciting, and just the right level of confusing" and described "The Great Game" as "a mash-up that totally works" and "an edge-of-the seat ride". However, he admitted he was confused at the end and had some nit-picks.

References

1. ^ Teti, John (7 November 2010). "The Great Game". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
2. ^ Wollaston, Sam (8 August 2010). "TV review: Sherlock". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
3. ^ Cumberbatch, Benedict; Martin Freeman; Mark Gatiss (2010). Audio commentary for "The Great Game" (DVD). Sherlock Series 1 DVD: BBC.{{cite AV media}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
4. Levine, Neil (17 April 2010). "Mark Gatiss talks 'Who', 'Sherlock'". Digital Spy. Retrieved 4 May 2012. {{cite web}}: |first2= missing |last2= (help)
5. Frost, Vicky (10 August 2010). "Sherlock to return for second series". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 March 2012.
6. "Sherlock – did you know?". BBC Entertainment. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
7. "Sherlock Holmes, and the riddle of the packed sandwich bar". Daily Mail. 15 August 2010. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
8. "University's starring role". Cardiff University. 27 July 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
9. Benji, Wilson (1–7 August 2009). "One Final Question: Mark Gatiss". Radio Times. BBC Magazines. p. 146.
10. "Network TV BBC Week 32: 7–13 August" (Press release). BBC. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
11. Millar, Paul (9 August 2010). "BBC One's 'Sherlock' surges to 7.3m". Digital Spy. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
12. "Weekly Top 30 Programmes". Broadcasters' Audience Research Board. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
13. ^ Tilly, Chris (9 August 2010). "Sherlock: "The Great Game" Review". IGN. Retrieved 4 April 2011.

External links

• "The Great Game" at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com episode

• Use dmy dates from October 2012
• 2010 in British television
• 2010 television episodes
• Screenplays by Mark Gatiss
• Works based on Sherlock Holmes
• Sherlock (TV series) episodes