Series three of Sherlock brings us the return of the world's most famous detective and, ultimately, his companion Dr. John Watson, played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, respectively. As is standard, the series consists of three 90 minute episodes. The first episode premiered on January 1st of 2014 after a two year gap. As with my series two review, spoilers will be largely unavoidable at this point so proceed at your own risk.
The Empty Hearse is the first episode and begins two years after the death of Sherlock Holmes. This results in an episode heavy with exposition. These types of episodes are always difficult to get into and there is the added burden, in this case, that too much is put into the 90 minutes. Like trying to thread a needle with a rope, we are brought up to date on just about every character in the series, in addition to the threat of an imminent terrorist attack on London, while also learning why Sherlock is, in fact, still alive. Sherlock, as it turns out, spent the previous two years destroying Moriarty's criminal network. In the mean time, John Watson has become involved with a woman named Mary Morstan, who he is attempting to propose to during the episode. Holmes returns to Watson as he is making his first attempt in a scene that, while clearly attempting to be humorous, I personally found to be more silly than anything else. There was also a later scene between Mycroft and Sherlock, reminiscing about their childhood, that had a bit of humor that I thought fell flat as well. As far as Sherlock's death goes, we are ultimately given something that could be an answer depending upon whether Sherlock actually visited Anderson or not. The scene is played in such a way that it could just as easily have been a hallucination on the part of Anderson as he attempted to assuage some of his guilt. However, even if this is the case, Anderson's solution could still be correct as it is definitely quite sound. During all of this the terror plot is, of course, foiled by Holmes and Watson. This is one of those episodes that definitely improved upon second viewing.
The next episode is The Sign of Three and as is fitting with the title, it is authored by all three of the series' regular writers. Sherlock is put in the awkward position of being Watson's best man at his wedding. Specifically, he is troubled by the speech he is expected to make as the best man. The episode is largely centered around the ceremony and the following reception but makes exceptionally effective use of flashbacks to tell the full story. The main mystery of the story surrounds a murder attempt at the reception, which leads to an awesome bit of the episode where Sherlock has to solve a case in real time, during the speech itself no less, which ends up tying a number of the episode's elements into a nice little bundle. The other big part of the story is the introduction of Mary Morstan/Watson as a character and, to some extent, this episode, along with His Final Vow make up a loose sort of two part story arc. Like The Empty Hearse, The Sign of Three also makes use of humor for some of the scenes, which worked far better for me in this episode than the first, although I could see them not working for everyone.
