I have watched all four series of Sherlock in less than a week.
This sounds considerably less impressive when you remember there are only thirteen episodes, but those episodes are basically films, so I am going to claim it as an achievement anyway.
Sherlock recently appeared on Disney+, which was all the encouragement I needed to start again from A Study in Pink, and I had forgotten quite how extraordinarily good it is. Not good in the sense of “this is nice to have on while I scroll through my phone”. Good in the sense that I actually put my phone down.
For me, that is an accolade considerably more meaningful than a BAFTA.
I have ADHD. I work online. I have approximately nine thousand thoughts happening simultaneously at any given moment, one of my cats will inevitably require something and there is always another notification somewhere trying to persuade me that whatever is happening on my screen is more important than whatever I deliberately chose to watch.
It takes a lot to make me properly watch television.
Sherlock does.
There is something about television that demands your attention rather than politely requesting it. Television where missing thirty seconds because you opened Instagram genuinely matters. Television where the dialogue is doing something, the camera is doing something, the music is doing something and you actually want to know what happens next.
I miss that.
And perhaps more specifically, I miss this particular kind of ambitious British television.
Sherlock originally ran from 2010 to 2017, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as John Watson, and watching it again now I am struck by how confident it was. It took one of the most adapted characters in literary history and somehow made him feel completely contemporary without making Arthur Conan Doyle disappear underneath him.
Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss created the series while also working on Doctor Who, which makes perfect sense when you watch the two programmes side by side. There is the same affection for huge ideas, impossible situations, clever dialogue, emotional punches and characters who are often several steps ahead of the audience.
And the performances in Sherlock are ridiculous.
Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant. Martin Freeman is brilliant. Andrew Scott turns Moriarty into something genuinely unsettling and weirdly magnetic. Amanda Abbington is wonderful when Mary arrives and changes the chemistry completely. Una Stubbs somehow makes Mrs Hudson both comforting and absolutely not somebody you would want to underestimate.
Even when Sherlock is being completely bonkers, it commits to being completely bonkers with such confidence that you go along with it.
That, actually, might be what I miss most.
Confidence.
British television used to occasionally behave as though it had absolutely no interest in whether something travelled well internationally, could be turned into sixteen spin-offs or provided enough “content” to keep a streaming platform alive for eight consecutive fiscal quarters.
It would simply say: we have an idea. It is clever. Here are some exceptional actors and ninety minutes. Pay attention.
Obviously television has not stopped being good. There are still shows that can make me do exactly that.
Dexter: Resurrection managed it. I watched it every week rather than allowing six episodes to pile up while telling myself I would “get around to it”. A second series arrives on Paramount+ on 30 October, so apparently Dexter Morgan will once again be responsible for me having appointments with my television.
And then there is The Diplomat, which is one of the best examples of modern television remembering that intelligent people talking to one another can actually be thrilling.
Give me Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell arguing about geopolitics in a corridor and apparently I am unavailable for the next fifty minutes.
Season four arrives on Netflix on 15 October, which is excellent news for me and considerably worse news for anybody expecting me to answer messages that evening.
But there is still something particularly British about the television I am talking about.
And that inevitably brings me to Doctor Who.
Of course it does.
At the moment Doctor Who is in what I can only describe as television purgatory.
The BBC has put production of the next era out to tender, asking companies to pitch for a new multi-episode series and specials, with the next full series currently envisaged for transmission in 2028/29. The current TARDIS set has even been dismantled, which feels unnecessarily dramatic considering this is a programme where the entire central concept involves regenerating rather than dying.
Still, I am nervous.
Not because Doctor Who should remain exactly as it was. That would completely misunderstand Doctor Who.
It is supposed to change.
The lead actor changes. The companions change. The writers change. The TARDIS changes. The tone changes. Sometimes even the font changes and everybody on the internet has to spend three days having opinions about it.
That is the point.
But I desperately hope whoever gets their hands on it understands what makes it special.
For me, David Tennant's Tenth Doctor was the one I loved most for a very long time. There were Doctors afterwards who I liked, certainly, but there wasn't another incarnation who really grabbed me in quite the same way until Ncuti Gatwa.
And strangely, I think that worked precisely because Gatwa wasn't trying to be Tennant.
He felt different.
His Doctor could be joyful and vulnerable and theatrical and deeply emotional. He brought something of his own to it, which is exactly what regeneration is supposed to do.
You cannot preserve Doctor Who by embalming it.
You preserve it by understanding its DNA well enough to change it.
The same is true, perhaps, of British drama more generally.
I don't necessarily want somebody to make another Sherlock. In fact, please don't give us Sherlock: Origins, Young Mrs Hudson, The Moriarty Files and a six-part Lestrade cinematic universe because I have suffered enough.
What I want is television with the same ambition.
I want writers to be allowed to write something dense and strange and funny and emotional without somebody insisting that the audience needs everything explained three times.
I want actors being given dialogue worth performing.
I want ninety-minute episodes when a story needs ninety minutes and six episodes when a series needs six episodes.
I want programmes that assume I am watching them.
Because there is something wonderful about finding a television programme that shuts everything else up.
That is quite rare for me.
My brain usually has several tabs open even when no actual browser is involved. I can watch something while simultaneously wondering whether I replied to an email, whether I need to order cat food, whether that thing I saw earlier would make a good TikTok and why exactly I walked into the kitchen twenty minutes ago.
Then occasionally something like Sherlock comes along and my brain goes quiet.
Not empty. Quiet.
Focused.
For ninety minutes I am not half-watching while doing three other things.
I am in 221B Baker Street.
I am noticing the clues.
I am listening to the dialogue.
I am watching Martin Freeman do more acting with one tiny facial movement than most of us could manage with an entire monologue.
That is what great television can do.
Streaming has given us more television than we could possibly watch in a lifetime, and yet sometimes I wonder whether having everything available all the time has made truly unmissable television feel rarer.
There is a difference between having something to watch and wanting desperately to watch something.
I want more of the second one.
So yes, apparently my latest cultural demand is that Britain produces more ridiculously clever, beautifully acted, properly absorbing drama.
No pressure.
Until then, I have reached The Final Problem, which means I am about to run out of Sherlock again.
And frankly, that feels like a problem somebody considerably more intelligent than me ought to solve.
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