• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

HBomberguy: "Sherlock (the BBC show) Is Garbage, And Here's Why"

I really hated season 4. I thought it was all such ridiculous bullshit. I thought the show was at its best when sherlock and moriarty were on screen together
 

takriel

Member
I don't really care for the plot of the series. It is visually pleasant to look at, I like the music and love the actors.

But yeah, the plot can be really dumb at times.
 
Alright, you babies. You don't wanna watch a 2 hour video, so here's the tl;dr version.

Yes, people are babies because they don't want to watch 2 god damn hours of someone giving his subjective opinion of a tv show even though many of these points have been raised over and over again.
 
Yes, people are babies because they don't want to watch 2 god damn hours of someone giving his subjective opinion of a tv show even though many of these points have been raised over and over again.
You can drop the subjective part, that's redundant. No such thing as an objective opinion anyway.
 
Yes, people are babies because they don't want to watch 2 god damn hours of someone giving his subjective opinion of a tv show even though many of these points have been raised over and over again.
No, I'd think they're 'babies' because despite not wanting to watch the video the thread is predicated on they still want to comment on the idea of the video.
 

peakish

Member
He's not wrong (well, as far as being "right" even goes for subjective opinions) but the video is mostly reiterating problems that have been widely discussed. I guess this is how critics of the SW prequels felt when the RLM reviews hit?

The first 10 minutes making comparisons to other Moffat series were interesting because that was new to me. Haven't seen them.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
The fourth season has not been released here yet, but season 1-2 were really great, season 3 was quite shitty, I hope season 4 is great again. Anyway, calling the whole series garbage I cannot get behind.
 
I liked S1 and S2 but S3 was such a curtain lift moment that retroactively made everything bad for me. It was like S3 in its stupidity and excess ended the charade that the show was any kind of clever which suddenly made S1 and S2's fun silliness seem obtuse and snobbish. Didn't even watch S4, S3 was that bad.

My bf and I were genuinely laughing at it by the end of it, and not in a good way.
 

daviyoung

Banned
DAxtsYBW0AA7sr8.jpg

lol
 

cyba89

Member
The internet hyperbole of something being either the greatest thing ever or irredeemable garbage with nothing inbetween is really getting old.
 
Some episodes of Sherlock are great and others are fucking appalling. Sherlock should be simple. A mystery happens, seemingly impossible events take place or else deduction seems impossible but clues are found along the way which only Sherlock (and occasionally, the more switched on viewer) takes notice of. At the end of each show, the mystery is revealed and the solution should make perfect sense in hindsight, ideally such that it could be solved by the viewer, albeit that this should not be easy.

A meta-narrative, stretching across the series is acceptable as long as follows those same rules. Characterisations, acting and style are all important but secondary to plot, which is the star of the show. There are enough mysteries in the source material to adapt so this should be possible, even if the writers find Doyle a tough act to follow.

Sometimes we get that with Sherlock and that's when the show works. But often the mystery is resolved by way of deus ex machina or is marginalised (or in some cases, is not even present) by a more prosaic action-adventure main plot pitched somewhere around Dr Who with some James Bond thrown in.

Dr Who, which involves many of the same people, has similar problems with the MacGuffin (the fact that the Doctor can go anywhere in time or space to find adventures) frequently mistaken for the actual purpose of the show.

However, when Sherlock works it works very well. The Guy Ritchie films (or at least the first one which I have seen) are not really anything to do with Holmes on anything but a purely superficial level.
 

Eidan

Member
On point. Luther doesn't get nearly enough love and it can be seen as a much better Sherlock in a lot of ways.

I like Sherlock, but I'm not a fan of the constant social issues they keep giving him. We get it, he's not great at social interactions, do we really need to be constantly hit over the head with it?

I like Luther, but it's just as guilty of massive leaps of logic and a detective with almost supernatural abilities of deduction as Sherlock. Elba's performance just, and the writing of the show, just make Luther a more relateable, likeable protagonist.
 

Fantastapotamus

Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
He actually likes that adaptation and calls the Guy Richie films "fun romps." He starts the video off with them.

Man, I watched only one of the Sherlock Holmes films and boy that was a burning trashfire.
Never seen "the show" (as if they have anything in common but the name)
 

PaulloDEC

Member
Alright, you babies. You don't wanna watch a 2 hour video, so here's the tl;dr version.

  • The show is focused too much around how super-special-awesome Sherlock and Moriarty are at the expense of literally everything else.
  • Because of this, almost all the other characters are basically destroyed, turning Watson from a viewer viewpoint character into a glorified extra who's most notable contributions to the story are as a Dude in Distress or turning Irene Adler from a one-off anti-villain into Sherlock's bisexual dominatrix girlfriend who doesn't even do the one thing she's actually famous for (beating Sherlock).
  • The show strings along audiences by teasing major plot developments but either keeps putting off actually delivering these point or flat out does the opposite of what they were teasing in the name of being "clever" (see the constant teasing of Moriarty coming back after Season 2 despite it never leading anywhere, or the opening of the last episode basically being revealed to have not even actually happened).
  • After the first episode or two the show basically stops providing the audience with anywhere near the information they need to make the mystery solvable to the audience, instead having Holmes get the necessary info offscreen or some other bullshit, which basically misses what makes the entire fucking mystery genre so engaging, being presented all the evidence and then watching it fall into place as the mystery is solved.
  • The writers seem to have contempt for the original stories, having Sherlock dismiss the solutions from the original stories in disdainful manners and basically gutting simple, well regarded stories in favor of convoluted nonsense, because, once again, it's "clever"
  • On top of that, the writers also seem to have contempt for the fans, with an entire episode spent mocking fan theorists despite them being the people actually treating the show like a mystery series instead of just "watching Sherlock be smart," which seems to be what the writers want them to do.
  • This is all wrapped up in a package that is overdone with overly slick editing and cinematography that adds nothing to the show and seems to exist solely to burn the insane budget the BBC gives them each season.

I can't really remember anything from Season 3 (and I've not seen Season 4 at all) but I'd say these are probably mostly fair comments, if a little extreme. The need to write "clever" stories as well as the deification of the lead are things that have showed up during Moffat's time on Doctor Who to varying degrees, and while they're far from deal-breakers for me, I can see why people aren't keen on them.

Not sure about that last point, though. As far as I'm aware, no show on the BBC has an "insane" budget, especially when compared with similar shows across the pond.
 

Auctopus

Member
Steven Moffat is one of the most overrated writers the BBC has. He writes bloated scripts that are up their own arse and his productivity rate is much lower than less appreciated writers.

S1/2 was fine but his latest Sherlock efforts and pretty much all I've seen of his Doctor Who output has been classic Moffat.
 

fantomena

Member
I understand the criticism, I think at least, but it is still one of my favorite shows of all times. Ive seen each season like 3 times and can do more.
 

Eidan

Member
I can't really remember anything from Season 3 (and I've not seen Season 4 at all) but I'd say these are probably mostly fair comments, if a little extreme. The need to write "clever" stories as well as the deification of the lead are things that have showed up during Moffat's time on Doctor Who to varying degrees, and while they're far from deal-breakers for me, I can see why people aren't keen on them.

Not sure about that last point, though. As far as I'm aware, no show on the BBC has an "insane" budget, especially when compared with similar shows across the pond.

The last point does seem dumb. Faulting a show because the filmmaking is too good? Okay.

Since we're using Youtubers to validate our opinions, here's Nerdwriter espousing the strengths of Sherlock's editing and camera work.

https://youtu.be/bfFgnJoLiQE
 

Oddish1

Member
I only saw the first episode, which was fine, and the Irene Adler episode, which was terrible. Since he had a section dedicated to how badly written the Irene Adler was in this show I got what I wanted out of this.
 

Seventy70

Member
I've always heard good things about it and recently gave it a shot. It didn't hook me at all. I think if I had watched it when it first came out, I probably would've liked it. Personally though, Netflix/Amazon original series have really raised the bar for quality to the point where much of cable TV feels very safe and boring.
 

Stalk

Member
I don't always agree with hbomberguy (he likes the prequels?), I do quite enjoy his content though. The thing that made me switch off Sherlock though was the mind palace circle jerking in a Christmas special (?). Just felt so lazy.

Still, not a fan of Moffat now a days either. So I come from a bit of bias.
 
Steven Moffat is one of the most overrated writers the BBC has. He writes bloated scripts that are up their own arse and his productivity rate is much lower than less appreciated writers.

S1/2 was fine but his latest Sherlock efforts and pretty much all I've seen of his Doctor Who output has been classic Moffat.

The issue with his approach is that the teams that work on these shows seem adept at writing and producing small, idiosyncratic and uniquely British fantasy dramas, unlike anything else on the market. Moffat seems to want to try to compete with ultra-high concept Hollywood movies and big budget US TV shows with clever-clever plot twists and fancy editing and effects. That is always an abject failure and makes his shows look really try-hard, cringey and, for want of a better word, lame. Dr Who isn't Star Trek TNG. Sherlock isn't...any generic spy/detective/high-tech police dude. They aren't "cool". That is not the point of them.
 

caliph95

Member
The show too me while in retrospective wasn't great since the first two seasons had weak second episodes fell apart in 3 whie it had some decent ideas it got way too meta in the first episode then a somewhat fun but superfluous and too clever for it's own good wedding and then wasted villain in 3rd episode. The Christmas special would have been better if it was just a simple mystery but nope moffat had to over complicate with some mind palace shenanigans which told us what could have been told in 10 minutes and him trying to be clever with the feminist angle about how we ignore female characters by sidelining them to make a point.then 4 was just shit.
 

hamchan

Member
I'd hope anyone who watched season 4 would be able to tell it was garbage.

But it also felt like Moffat dumped all his crazy convoluted nonsense into this which freed up the current season of Doctor Who from suffering the same fate, so hooray.
 

caliph95

Member
I'd hope anyone who watched season 4 would be able to tell it was garbage.

But it also felt like Moffat dumped all his crazy convoluted nonsense into this which freed up the current season of Doctor Who from suffering the same fate, so hooray.
You know there's a silver lining it at least freed of capaldi of some of the bullshit, leaving season 1 with decent with few weak episodes, the other two being solid so far.
 

Hopeford

Member
The issue with his approach is that the teams that work on these shows seem adept at writing and producing small, idiosyncratic and uniquely British fantasy dramas, unlike anything else on the market. Moffat seems to want to try to compete with ultra-high concept Hollywood movies and big budget US TV shows with clever-clever plot twists and fancy editing and effects. That is always an abject failure and makes his shows look really try-hard, cringey and, for want of a better word, lame. Dr Who isn't Star Trek TNG. Sherlock isn't...any generic spy/detective/high-tech police dude. They aren't "cool". That is not the point of them.

I think this is something that most Sherlock adaptations miss, not just Moffat. Holmes was cool, but he wasn't really presented as such. The fact Conan Doyle wasn't huge on him - and less than that depending on the time of his life - made him write him in a pretty specific way, without trying too hard to make him seem cool. I think what made the original canon so good is that there are honestly very few "big" moments.

Most of the stories are these somewhat casual, almost amusing anecdotes about this bizarre-but ultimately good-person who solves a problem with the bare minimum effort, which annoys him. There are the occasional "big" adventures like Sign of Four, but those are beside the point.

This is what makes the Holmes stories interesting to me, and why adaptations(by design) won't capture the same feeling. Most Holmes stories didn't have a huge climax and television lives and dies on those right now. And I understand why they have to up the ante for most plots but...well, I still don't really like it you know?

Then again, I should stop complaining about modern Holmes adaptations not being perfect. It's not their fault that the perfect adaptation has already been made.

Jeremy Brett will always be my perfect Holmes.

Like, I was writing this post about sadly lamenting how Holmes can't be adapted properly and then halfway through, "...Wait. Granada. Jeremy Brett."
 

Sheroking

Member
That show does not need defending. It is pretty good considering the horrid format it has to follow.

I remember thinking that during Season 1, although since we've gotten Lucifer, which escapes the confines of that procedural genre far better than Elementary ever has.
 

peakish

Member
The last point does seem dumb. Faulting a show because the filmmaking is too good? Okay.

Since we're using Youtubers to validate our opinions, here's Nerdwriter espousing the strengths of Sherlock's editing and camera work.

https://youtu.be/bfFgnJoLiQE
It's not that it's too good, his complaint is that some scenes are overproduced they have the budget to spend for it. One of his examples was a set of wedding photos. They couldn't just be some nice pictographs, they had to be extravagant stills where the camera rotates around the frozen scene. It looks nice for sure but it's not serving the story. A scene that could have been short when shot in a simple way becomes overly long and padded. Well, that's what I inferred from this part of his video at least. He shows a few scenes in which he thinks the show's style works in it's favor, too.
 

Sheroking

Member
It's not that it's too good, his complaint is that some scenes are overproduced they have the budget to spend for it. One of his examples was a set of wedding photos. They couldn't just be some nice pictographs, they had to be extravagant stills where the camera rotates around the frozen scene. It looks nice for sure but it's not serving the story. A scene that could have been short when shot in a simple way becomes overly long and padded. Well, that's what I inferred from this part of his video at least. He shows a few scenes in which he thinks the show's style works in it's favor, too.

That specific scene in particular exists to particularly highlight the Wedding photos in the viewers mind, as the killer winds up being the photographer.

Even if these types of shots WERE all practically empty, they last a couple seconds each. They are not present or long enough to actually pad the running time.
 

Nev

Banned
Some may disagree, but he creates some really engaging videos.

No, he doesn't.

His Souls "essays" are absolute garbage. He tries too hard to be this sort of respected youtube critic and he falls incredibly short while making himself look ridiculous. I'll never understand why he's somehow being posted here as if he was dunkey or crowbCat. He has nothing on these kind of people.

Seems like he didn't have enough with videogames and is bringing his hot takes to film. I pity those who take this fraud "critic" seriously.
 

Scarecrow

Member
I'm at the part where he talks about fans thinking there's a secret fourth good episode and how ridiculous that is. People thought the same thing about Metal Gear 5. Has such an inane theory ever panned out?
 

munchie64

Member
Just listened and not watched so apologies if I missed something big, but I just really can't agree with most of what's being said here.

The mysteries mainly supplemented the characters and interactions that carried the show right until the end of the series imo.
 

Dryk

Member
I can't really remember anything from Season 3 (and I've not seen Season 4 at all) but I'd say these are probably mostly fair comments, if a little extreme. The need to write "clever" stories as well as the deification of the lead are things that have showed up during Moffat's time on Doctor Who to varying degrees, and while they're far from deal-breakers for me, I can see why people aren't keen on them
Moffatt's style works a lot better in the context of modern Who because it isn't too far removed from what Davies did (most of the time). But in what is supposed to be a cerebral mystery show the Orci and Kurtzmann thing where you loosely string a bunch of setpieces together and call it a plot doesn't fly.

The points where Moffatt is the most annoying to me personally is when he gets self aware, admits that none of it makes any sense and tells the audience to suck it up.
 

peakish

Member
That specific scene in particular exists to particularly highlight the Wedding photos in the viewers mind, as the killer winds up being the photographer.

Even if these types of shots WERE all practically empty, they last a couple seconds each. They are not present or long enough to actually pad the running time.
Since his big problem with the series is a lack of substance I imagine that it just highlights it for him. I can't even remember these episodes well enough to know if I'd be bothered by it. I don't think I was.

No, he doesn't.

His Souls "essays" are absolute garbage. He tries too hard to be this sort of respected youtube critic and he falls incredibly short while making himself look ridiculous. I'll never understand why he's somehow being posted here as if he was dunkey or crowbCat. He has nothing on these kind of people.

Seems like he didn't have enough with videogames and is bringing his hot takes to film. I pity those who take this fraud "critic" seriously.
"Fraud critic" lmao.
 

Sheroking

Member
Moffatt's style works a lot better in the context of modern Who because it isn't too far removed from what Davies did (most of the time). But in what is supposed to be a cerebral mystery show the Orci and Kurtzmann thing where you loosely string a bunch of setpieces together and call it a plot doesn't fly.

The points where Moffatt is the most annoying to me personally is when he gets self aware, admits that none of it makes any sense and tells the audience to suck it up.

Steven Moffat has a terrific knack for horror, snappy dialogue and heavy emotional swings, but struggles when he's given the power to unfurl a story over a dozen or so episodes. His instinct is to convolute the story and keep the pace at 11, when he should be unpacking and resolving. You could make a coherent argument that Moffat wrote the best episodes in each of RTD's seasons as showrunner where Russell's episodes were not particularly strong.

Sherlock's no different. The two best episodes - legitimately great episodes against any curve IMO - of this series were written by him. It's his overall direction as showrunner that turns people off more than anything.
 

ZeoVGM

Banned
The show has fallen off a cliff, but there is no universe where it is worse than Guy Ritchie's incoherent garbage.

Two very different takes on Sherlock. Quality argument aside, Ritchie's movies are plenty coherent.
 

Fantastapotamus

Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
So, I'm an hour in now and I typically like this guy's stuff. This is not a bad video by any means, but I feel like he could have gotten his point across in at least half the time. It's like he thought of 15 fun things to say about one scene and instead of choosing the best one he insists of saying all of them. So many points get repeated at nauseum.
His editing makes this thing still fun to watch but this really didn't need to be 110 minutes long
 
Top Bottom