So, the final problem has been solved and Moffat & Gatiss have confirmed that this could be the end for Sherlock.

We’d be very surprised if a fifth season doesn’t happen at some point, but it seems a safe bet that it’ll be a decent wait (even by Sherlock hiatus standards) until we get another trio of adventures.

Buy the complete Season 1-4 box set on DVD on Amazon here.

Buy the complete Season 1-4 box set on Blu-ray on Amazon here.

In the meantime, let’s take a look back at all 13 episodes so far, ranked from worst to best…

 

13. ‘The Blind Banker’ 

The pedestrian direction and small-fry nature of the case-of-the-week don’t sink this to the bottom rung so much as its deeply frustrating Yellow Peril plot, in which Chinese People Are Evil Except For The Attractive Female Anglophile.

 

12. ‘The Empty Hearse’

Even with the knowledge of what Mark Gatiss is driving at with this script – it’s the emotional reactions of the characters that matter rather than the mystery – this one feels too undercooked and uneven to ever fully satisfy.

 

11. ‘The Abominable Bride’

Enormously fun, and it’s never less than a joy seeing Cumberbatch and Freeman swanning around in Victorian London, but it’s hard to pretend that this amounts to rivalling the best episodes of Sherlock, for all that it deconstructs the mythos.

 

10. ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’

Again, it’s not bad as such – Russell Tovey is excellent, and the Dartmoor filming is also a welcome change. But as a relatively “straight” retelling of the source material, it’s a little uninspired in comparison to the show’s usual narrative pyrotechnics.

 

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