A few thoughts on the recent return of Sherlock, the TV series; partly provoked by the recent episode itself, but also by very interesting discussion of one of the characters, Irene Adler, on Comment is Free (a persuasive argument but, man alive, look at the ferocious gibberish it inspires - how dare a woman suggest a man might poor at writing for women?).
1. Sherlock is the ideal series for literate urban folk. Both the series and character are troves of information. It may be unusual but this is one of Sherlock’s sympathetic qualities. You may need Google or Wikipedia, but you too can summon up the Chinese numerical system or the Van Buren supernova just like that.
2. It is becoming quite common (at least in culture) to associate super-intelligence with autism. We now even project back into history to guess who might have been autistic, Newton, Einstein etc.
3. Sherlock’s characterisation skirts the dodgy intellectual regions of ubermensch (the outer reaches of the liberal theory of knowledge). Sherlock is presented as the rational-detached half of the traditional dichotomy, rational-detached versus intuitive-involved. Even if his outlook is regularly undermined, even he is shown as paying a high price for his outlook, living as a “high-functioning sociopath” or “freak”, in the end he always prevails. He is like this so we don’t have to be.
4. The British state, in the form of Mycroft Holmes, is presented, I think, as a Greater Ubermensch, for example the oh-so delicate plot to fool non-specific terrorists into blowing up a remote controlled plane full of dead people. It may have just been my perception but the latest episode, Scandal in Belgravia, seemed to end on a Blairite if-you-knew-what-I-knew moral canard.
That said Sherlock is fun TV, an especially well acted, stylish blur.