★★★☆☆
The final problem turned out to be a family puzzle, almost family therapy for Sherlock Holmes. Deep in his childhood lay the suppressed memory of a dog that died and a vengeful, ignored little sister, who was responsible.
Except it was worse than that. Red Beard turned out not to be a dog but the young Sherlock’s best friend. His nasty little pyromaniac sister, Eurus, had since grown into a big psychopath clever enough to escape her island fortress jail. Having bombed Baker Street and incarcerated her brothers, she was now torturing Sherlock and Mycroft with a series of life-or-death puzzles. She wanted not their love but their attention and forgiveness.
It was a satisfying Sherlock season finale for answers. It explained why Sherlock was phobic about friendship — he had lost his best pal when very young — and unearthing the memories proved healing. Why, at the end, Sherlock actually called Inspector Lestrade by his first name! Moriarty, played by the episode-stealing Andrew Scott, reappeared, but only in a flashback to conspire with Eurus. So he really was dead. So was Mary Watson, but, on DVD she had some magnificent last words.
Sherlock, she said, was a junkie who solved cases to get high and Watson a doctor who had never come home from the war.
The problem with The Final Problem was that it was not, finally, much fun. Yes, there were fun moments. When we realised there was no glass between the imprisoned Eurus and Sherlock was one. Moriarty and her enjoying some kind of mind meld was another.
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All kinds of tensions were racked up in the scene in which Molly had to tell Sherlock that she loved him before a bomb went off. Some of it, perhaps, made little sense. For all his intimacy issues and reluctance to raise Molly’s hopes, Sherlock would have known that saying “I love you” first was always going to do the trick.
Whereas Sherlock’s airy visualisation of London is among its usual strengths, this episode was claustrophobically dark. If Sherlock owned a mind palace and Watson rooms peopled by his wife’s ghost, Eurus mentally occupied a crashing aeroplane. The repetitive middle, shoot-someone-or-you-die section made me feel I was on one too. I recalled not only the co-writer Steven Moffat’s Heaven Sent episode of Doctor Who, which confined the Doctor to an island castle for a 55-minute eternity but, less fortunately, Fort Boyard, without as many jokes.
At least the back story is now out of the way. When Sherlock returns, Moffat and Mark Gatiss, who co-wrote last night’s ingenious challenge to its fans’ patience, can get back to telling stories about cases again.