Sherlock - Season 4 (2017)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2017
	Creators: Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat
	Actors: Benedict Cumberbatch (Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hobbit 1-3), Martin Freeman (The Hobbit 1-3, Fargo TV-series), Una Stubbs, Toby Jones (Captain America 1-2, Berberian Sound Studio)
	Country: GB
	Genre: Polar
	Conditions of visioning: April 2017, VOD, 32" TV screen.
Synopsis: London consulting detective Sherlock Holmes (Cumberbatch) gets ever-deeper in his crime-solving mania, supported as always by his best friend John Watson (Freeman). But that friendship will be once more put to the test when the cases they solve are in their own backyard.
Review: This very original and successful British TV-series (see reviews of the seasons one, two and three) was paused for a while because of the involvement of its main two actors in the Hobbit trilogy. However a "Christmas Special" episode was released in January 2016 and is often referred to as Episode 0 of this fourth season although released a year earlier. The brilliant idea behind that episode entitled The Abominable Bride is to show an investigation of our two friends taking place at the end of the 19th century, as in the original writings by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is a delightful episode to watch, as much as it was to discover at the beginning of the series the transposition of the Sherlock story to modern times. And in the end it is not simply a Christmas gift from the producers but it does connect to the series storyline. Simply brilliant. The three other episodes are more in line with the previous seasons, although I could notice an evolution in the series: the episodes are not anymore used to establish the relationships between the characters (Sherlock, John, Mary...) because we know them well. They also do not anymore display the deduction exploits of the detective. The episodes are now digging deeper into those relationships and how they evolved with time. Episode 1 The Six Thatchers may start like a tricky investigation, it ends up being much closer to our characters as we would have expected. In fact the same can be told of Episode 2 The Lying Detective (with an excellent Toby Jones) and of Episode 3 The Final Problem that will confront the Holmes brothers with a new archenemy. In spite of this evolution and of undeniably good ideas (Cumberbatch's performance is still fascinating), I realized that I was starting to loose interest in the series when wondering if the episodes had gotten longer (because I felt them so) while they haven't. The rating is thus an average between the 8/10 I would give to the Episode 0 and 5/10 to the rest of the season.
Rating: 6 /10