Moranthology by Caitlin Moran Page B

realization until he’s as high as the sun.
    Ten minutes later, and he’s in the gallery, staring at the Vermeer. He knows it’s fake but doesn’t know how to prove it. Then Moriarty’s latest, TNT-garlanded victim calls him. The voice is tiny.
    â€œIt’s a child!” Lestrade, Watson and the audience horror. “A child!” The child starts counting backwards from ten—Holmes has ten seconds to prove the Vermeer is a fake. The tension is insane—I was biting my wrists with distress—but when the answer bursts on Holmes, he almost doesn’t shout out the answer in time: the pleasure he’s had from smashing the case has him high as a kite. He is wired.
    But the whole season has been building up to Holmes meeting Moriarty and, finally, in a deserted swimming pool, here he is: Jim Moriarty. Young, fast, Irish .
    Sherlock seems oddly— relieved at finally meeting Moriarty. Yeah, he’s completely evil—but he’s also the only person in the world who doesn’t, ultimately, bore Holmes. He’s made the last week thrilling. Moriarty makes Holmes come alive—even when he’s trying to kill him. And Moriarty knows this.
    â€œIs that a Browning in your pocket—or are you just pleased to see me?” he asks.
    â€œBoth,” Holmes says, during a scene that had an undeniable undercurrent of hotness.
    But things suddenly turn. Moriarty knows that Holmes is bad for business. And—oh yeah—Dr. Watson’s still standing in the corner, covered in TNT. Moriarty’s threatening to explode him. I’d forgotten about that, during the hotness.
    â€œThe flirting’s over, my dear,” Moriarty says, warning Holmes off.
    Holmes is in accord. “People have died.”
    And suddenly, the awfulness of Moriarty comes roaring out. “THAT’S. What people DO,” he screams—eyes dilating so huge and black, I wondered if it might have been done with CGI. “I will BURN the HEART out of you,” he continues, warning Holmes off his patch, boilingly insane. It was like when Christopher Lloyd shows his evil Toon eyes in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?— truly startling. Andrew Scott has some serious chops.
    And there, five minutes later, we left them, on a cliff-hanger. Moriarty’s snipers shining their laser sights on Holmes’s and Watson’s hearts; Holmes pointing his gun at a pile of TNT, telling Moriarty he’s happy to blow them all sky high; The Great Game ended in checkmate. Not quite as amazing as the first episode—which was the televisual equivalent of someone kicking a door off its hinges, screaming, “I’ve COME to BLOW your MINDS!”—but a different league from Episode Two; and still the best thing on all week by several, palpable, indexable leagues.
    Sherlock ends its run as a reekingly charismatic show, flashing its cerise silk suit lining in a thousand underplayed touches: Holmes watching The Jeremy Kyle Show— “Of course he’s not the father! Look at the turn-up on his jeans!” The neat one-two of, “Meretricious!” “And a happy New Year!” A myriad of amazing moments from Cumberbatch, who will surely—surely—with his voice like a jaguar in a cello, and his face like sloth made of pearl—get a BAFTA for such a passionate, whole-hearted, star-bright re-booting of an icon.
    No one can be in any doubt that the BBC will re-commission Sherlock , and that—so long as Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are in charge of the scripts, as they were for the first and last episode—it will continue to totally delight anyone who watches it.
    But next time, in sixes, or twelves, or twenty-fours, please. Not threes. Threes are over far, far too quickly. Now Sunday is just . . . normal again.

 
    I still haven’t got round to doing what I propose in this next piece. I really must. I am still haunted by the boy in the playground. I