My Virtual Reading Room

"In fact, Cumberbatch’s performance as Sherlock is Doctor-y in tone and swagger. Fans who gobble Cumberbatch up in the role have designated him as a Hot New Thing; after movie roles in “War Horse” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” he’s now filming Peter Jackson’s upcoming “The Hobbit” and landed a villainous part in J.J. Abrams’s “Star Trek” sequel.

He’s quite something, all right, but I can’t be the only one who finds this particular version of Sherlock to be a little grating. He’d be almost unwatchable if it weren’t for the tender devotion and counterbalance Martin Freeman brings to the role of Watson. In Cumberbatch, we get a Holmes who is not merely vain or aloof; he is so socially tone-deaf and brusque that I’d place him on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. “Get out! I need to go to my mind palace!” Sherlock shrieks at Watson, et al. — which means he needs to enter a trance state in which his superior memory and observation skills launch a quick-edit rush of images and clues.

Rather than ask for help at being a kinder and more well-adjusted grown-up, Sherlock is too often a petulant know-it-all, which grows tiresome and makes a viewer painfully aware that each episode is 90 minutes long."

(From The Washington Post; the entire article is here )

"That warming touch comes from the show's take on the relationship between Sherlock and Doctor Watson — played, in two of the best performances you'll find anywhere this season, by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. The limits of the friendship are undefined (Watson constantly bristles that people think they're gay, one of the few times such a running joke avoids growing stale), but what's clear is Sherlock has grown to count on Watson as a friend, and that Watson has begun to see through some of Sherlock's ego-driven bluster.

Not that it's any easier to be friends with Sherlock in these three films than it was in the first. As so amusingly played by Cumberbatch, who has imbued his character with a singeing intelligence and an offbeat sexual allure, Sherlock is a constant source of insulting ill-timed truths, a showoff who just can't help himself. It's no wonder Freeman's equally amusing Watson tells him "I always hear 'punch me in the face' when you're speaking" — the wonder is that Freeman also makes Watson's bond with Sherlock perfectly believable."

( From USA Today; the entire article is here)