Review:
Sherlock: The Blind Banker

102 – The Blind Banker

‘I’m Sherlock Holmes and I can do it all by myself!’ – Watson

After that show-stopping opening episode, this second of three comes as a minor disappointment. One of the major problems is that the episode’s length is perhaps too long for the amount of story going on in it, leaving whole swathes of filler wasting precious screen time.

This week, Sherlock is contacted by an old school friend who knows of his peculiar attention to detail in order to help understand and solve a puzzling riddle. It seems that someone managed to break into an international bank on the thirtieth floor and graffiti the portrait of the recently deceased manager. The symbols are completely unknown even to Sherlock. More puzzling still is the discovery that one of the bank staff appears to have committed suicide in his London flat with all the doors locked from the inside…

It’s an intriguing case, this one. The only downside is that the solution doesn’t feel anywhere near as exciting as the set-up. The answers are fairly clever – once they start coming – and the clues, as with the previous episode, are very discreetly displayed throughout the episode. It’s just a slight shame that it doesn’t quite feel worth it to solve the mystery.

Essentially the episode hangs on the premise that the villain is in London for a brief period and that Sherlock is just waiting for them to put on a show in order to catch them. That’s all. You get the impression that Sherlock himself is delaying the investigation in order to watch the show before he moves in, even though the viewers are clearly told that a) the villain is an acrobat and b) it involves Chinese historical artefacts. After that’s made clear, you just sit around waiting for Sherlock to point his finger.