Sherlock Season 3 [Blu-ray]

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

Best Sherlock ever, with my favorite episodes on it…the wedding and the return after Sherlock’s dive off the building at the beginning of the last season. Other reviewers said this was the version to have, as the unedited BBC version. Maybe, I don’t know, I only watched it on Netflix. I will be getting the first two seasons too and watching carefully for anything further. The scripts are awesome and fresh, the pacing and camera work great and intersting, and the casting superb. Not gorey but enough chase scenes and action to suit anybody. LOvE It.

I love mysteries and Sherlock Holmes, who doesn’t!! THIS IS BY FAR the best interpretation of a modern Sherlock and Watson, love Mary Watson too.-Amazon Customer

First I decided Jeremy Brett was the best Sherlock Holmes on the screen, then Johnny Lee Miller, then Benedict Cumberbatch, but now I think it’s Jeremy Brett for the first season, before he put too much Brett into the character. There’s nothing wrong with Cumberbatch’s interpretation – well, there is: he’s just not fastidious enough for my taste. Holmes of the penny dreadful stories is nothing if not fastidious. I see him on the floor, examining a clue no one else can even see, then when he stands up, he’s still clean, as if he had just stepped out of the entrance to 221B. He is never called Sherlock, his name is “Holmes.” But Cumberbatch revels in the behaviors that make one dirty. He may be Sherlock, but he is not Holmes.
Martin Freeman’s Watson, however, is far and away the best Watson I have ever seen, better that I could have imagined after at least a dozen bumbling, moronic Watsons we seem to have been gifted with over the years. Freeman’s Watson is courageous,, intelligent, but injured by the horrors of war, and with the need for action that life with Holmes offers. Absolutely the best, a match for Sherlock in every way except Watson has a moral compass that Sherlock seems to lack.
To say Cumberbatch’s Sherlock was not my favorite Holmes is not to say that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy every minute of every episode in three seasons of the show, I was completely involved, entangled, addicted to the show. And while I was watching, I thought Cumberbatch had the character down pat, but in retrospect I can’t say he was “better”, just new and different, and unfortunately, like a child who doesn’t mind getting muddy as he splashes through the puddles after a rain.
So… An excellent re-interpretation of the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, excellent in all aspects save one, and Benedict Cumberbbatch is an excellent, award worthy actor who’s immersion in the character of Sherlock the hyper-intelligent man, stuck developmentally at twelve years old, who’s exuberant pursuit of accurate explanations of reality lead to wonderful stories for us to watch unfold. I will watch them again, and possibly again, and enjoy every minute. You should too.- db

I’ve just watched all three seasons (and not planning to buy #4).

Stellar actors in Freeman, Cumberbatch and the supporting cast. I particularly like this Lestrade…a man who puts duty before ego, and has the *amazing* maturity to suffer the demeaning treatment of Holmes, and still understand, and forgive, the damaged though brilliant person he is. Kudos too, to an unusual “Mary Watson”, fully equal to the two men in her life. Molly began one dimensional but expanded into her own tragic arc…she was a woman to respect, as Sherlock too came to see. The two chief villians are short on believability but long on creepiness; stellar acting again, though. Mycroft, too, was an excellent rendition.

Plot believability suffered in a number of episodes… in the “Hound”, the actors suddenly recovered from their delusion-inducing gassing, to make immediate speeches!

Sadly, the writers were determined to make Sherlock a martyr for a love he couldn’t obtain, and give the whole series a miserable spin. The one-sided homoerotic subtext was pretty heartbreaking. In the bachelor pub spree, a drunk Watson puts his hand on Sherlock’s knee, to which Sherlock replies “Go ahead, I don’t mind.” (I don’t think Watsion is gay; he is rather a man with a need he must somehow express in acceptable terms in society…not homosexuality, but a need for violence, thrills, adrenalin, danger. Sherlock thus is Watson’s “fix”).

But I did read this Sherlock as closet homoerotic. Or at least deeply lonely. He however remains strangulated and unable to express emotions except in a “double blind” pretence (“I’m saying this but it’s a jest or a ruse [and that’s the only way I can say it]” when, of course, it is not jest or ruse, but deeply felt).

Thus this is a damaged, ultimately sad, broken Sherlock, in my opinion. For all his childish rudeness, I felt sorry for this lonely, flawed character.

This Sherlock adopted his Watson as one would a dog. He thought he needed someone to admire and love him. He wanted love and praise from the dog, to ease his innate insecurity and loneliness. But as anyone who has ever adopted a dog knows, we may *think* that, when we take on the tail-wagging dog, but in the end, we realise *we* needed to love, even more than *be* loved, as we had assumed. So Sherlock martyrs himself for the unrequited love he feels for his Watson.

A sad, but fascinating, series.

– ShopperGrrl

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, Una Stubbs, Mark Gatiss
Directors: Jeremy Lovering, Colm McCarthy, Nick Hurran
Writers: Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Format: Blu-ray, NTSC, Widescreen
Language: English (DTS 5.1)
Region: Region A/1
Number of discs: 2
Rated: NR-Not Rated
Studio: BBC Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: February 11, 2014
Run Time: 262 minutes
ASIN: B00E3UN59Q