i was talking with my mother the other day and the conversation came around to Fargo and Martin Freeman which made my mom think of BBC Sherlock.
she asked me when the show was due back i told her the first i heard was Christmas but then that looked to not be happening the new date we had was two years. she looked at me and very displeased and asked why.
i told her about schedule conflicts, but she didn’t let me continue.
she said: if there going to have such long breaks they should just end it. because the show will only get worse (she was not a fan of s3). you can’t freeze actors or writers in time. they’re changing and evolving. the writers get new ideas and new directions to take the show. the actors mature and change and are not the people they were last time we saw them. it’s not the same show anymore.
my mother was frustrated less by the waiting time but more by what she saw was change in the show between the waiting. s1and 2 was a lot alike. it had the same mood followed the same rules. the actors fell into a rhythm together.
s3 was awkward. i was never sure if it was the script, the directing, or perhaps the adding of Amanda that threw things off. i kept wondering if the chemistry was odd or if it was everything together that didn’t work quiet right.
but i think my mother has a point.
i love Sherlock not just BBC Sherlock but the canon. s3 just didn’t feel right and perhaps the problem is you can’t come back 2 years later and pick up where you left off. the actors have evolved but the characters might not have. the writers also have a huge change in writing style which if i’m honest really didn’t work for me.
so now i’m worried. what will s4 look like in 2 years. will it be more off track from the original show? will it be something completely different? do i want to stick around and find out or do like i do now, pretend s3 didn’t happen and just read fanfic for my post fall fulfillment.
i don’t know it’s something i have to think about.
There’s something to be said for this, I think. I don’t believe that the longer wait did the actors or writers any favors.
A story just tends to change on you when you go for years in between working on it. Two things tend to happen: either you discover the story feels reedy and needs work to catch it up to how you’ve grown as a writer in the time you’ve been away; or else you discover that in your time away, you got preoccupied with certain elements that stood out to you and that you are now writing a stylized version of your original story.
Personally, when the latter happens to me, I tend to find the quality suffers. It can be very interesting! But it tends to crush the organic vibrancy of the original in favor of something that feels more artificial and, well, artistically distorted.
Also worth noting of course is that we have only nine episodes so far. Which really is only just beginning to be enough for us to get a real sense of what their real vision for this show is and what they want to get out of it—assuming they even know. Another trick with a two year break is that the priorities and interests of the writers, cast, etc. can change significantly in that time.
Although since this season also changed directors (repeatedly), and had to grapple with Reichenbach (I still say that even acknowledging the damn thing is a terrible move; it didn’t happen because it made sense or even because it was dramatic, it happened because ACD WANTED TO STOP WRITING THE SERIES), it’s hard to say for sure what was a real difference in the writing or acting, and what was a difference in directorial vision or even simply the writers having to contort themselves to figure out “What the fuck do we even do with this?”
I find it laughable, though, when they or anybody else talks about how “it’s always been two years!” There have only been two season breaks, and one of them was a year and a half and the other was two years. There is no “always.”
Frankly I think they’d be better served to acknowledge they’re not making a TV series at all. They’re making a series of TV movies. It’s an entirely different sort of pacing and continuity. And they would probably also be better served to space out the scheduling when they show them. I know everybody gets excited, but showing them as fast as they do simply leaves the audience reeling and trying to make sense of what they’ve been given rather than looking forward to the next one. Show them at LEAST one every two weeks, or even one a month, and it will cut down a bit on the sense of waiting and give everybody more breathing room.