This is a cute piece in the Daily Mail on the boon that Sherlock has brought to Speedy’s Snack Bar, and it reveals who really lives in the flat above:

A BBC spokeswoman said they wanted to film on Baker Street but were thwarted by heavy traffic.
The flat above Speedy’s, in North Gower Street, is really home to two South Korean students, one of whom, Tae Kim, 33, said: ‘There have been lots of people taking photographs outside.’

It’s nice to see Speedy’s — here’s a Google Maps link to its location — getting extra business, and kudos to Gatiss, Moffat, and Vertue for not replacing the awning with something fictional. I do hope in the second series we get an explanation of Mrs Hudson’s relationship to the “snax and sarnies” shop some of us saw from the pilot footage, though.

One other thing we just noticed that we hadn’t seen mentioned is that the building just adjacent to Speedy’s (and the fictional 221B Baker St) on North Gower is the site of a blue plaque — in this case, Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian Patriot. Not significant for Sherlock, surely, but just another bit of interesting trivia for those of you planning on taking the time to scout out all the filming locations from series one before we get more episodes.

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We’re only adding a question mark in the title as we have yet to receive any confirmation of these numbers, but it looks like “The Great Game” yielded another excellent appreciation index score — 88.3 out of 100, the highest for the entire series.

These data come to us from the excellent television ratings threads on Gallifrey Base, the premier Doctor Who forum, so we’re assuming they’re accurate until we hear otherwise. Additionally, from the same thread, Sherlock did extraordinarily well for its broadcast of “The Blind Banker” compared to other series that week:

Top 20 programmes, 26/7/2010 – 1/8/2010

1. Eastenders – 9.65 million
2. Coronation Street – 9.44 million*
3. Sherlock – 8.07 million*
4. Emmerdale – 7.01 million
5. Top Gear – 6.19 million*
6. Who Do You Think You Are? – 5.97 million
7. Casualty – 5.72 million
8. Holby City – 5.48 million
9. BBC News – 4.95 million
10. Heartbeat – 4.71 million
11. My Family – 4.66 million
12. Ten O’Clock News – 4.60 million
13. Celebrity Masterchef – 4.59 million
14. Midsomer Murders (repeat) – 4.58 million
15. National Lottery – 4.57 million
16. Formula 1: Hungarian Grand Prix – 4.55 million
17. Countryfile – 4.37 million
18. Taggart – 4.32 million
19. John Bishop’s Britain – 4.23 million
20. Identity – 4.18 million*

*includes HD

BBC1 = 13
BBC2 = 1
ITV1 = 6

Third only to Coronation Street and Eastenders? Impressive.

Again, I haven’t been able to find confirmation of these numbers elsewhere, so take them with a grain of salt for now, but they seem in line with what others have reported regarding Sherlock‘s excellent performance this summer. We’d appreciate links to the appreciation index and other viewership data if any of you happen to know where to look!

(Thanks to Kazters for pointing us to the thread!)

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A few weeks ago, we posted a (somewhat angry) rant about Gerard Gilbert’s piece in The Independent, which basically boiled down to a pre-transmission kneejerk reaction of “Leave Holmes alone!” Well, now that the first series has concluded, it’s nice to see that he’s actually watched the series and has written about a change of heart for the series:

My point had been that when every modern fictional detective is basically derived from Sherlock Holmes, and CSI and its ilk have milked dry the science of forensics – Holmes’s USP – updating Conan Doyle to the 21st century seemed a somewhat redundant exercise. That, however, was reckoning without the bold, inventive and witty minds of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Their loving trilogy of 90-minute dramas has rightly been the runaway TV hit of the summer – and made a star of an actor, who is, in Moffat’s words, “the only man to play Sherlock Holmes with an even stupider name”.

Calling Sherlock “the ideal Holmes show” and Cumberbatch’s performance a “revelation,” well, there’s some crow being eaten over at the Independent. He’s not completely satisfied with the series (for many of the same reasons we weren’t), but is hopeful that the future of the series is bright. Nice to see one of the few unjustifiably critical pieces about Sherlock revisited, and fans of the series thank Mr. Gilbert for his mea culpa.

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Digitalspy reports that Sue Vertue and Steven Moffat were on BBC Breakfast this morning, and confirmed what we’ve all be suspecting, that there will be another series of Sherlock:

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Vertue – who appeared with husband and show co-creator Steven Moffat – revealed that an agreement has already been made with the BBC.

“There will be more. We’re having a meeting, just to sort of talk about how many and when really. Steven and Mark [Gatiss] are both busy,” she said. “Obviously Steven is doing Doctor Who as well so it’s just when we are going to do them.”

Happily, the pool cliffhanger isn’t the end of the series, and we’ll presumably get some kind of resolution… someday. Additionally, Media Guardian are reporting the same, and link to Vertue and Moffat on BBC Breakfast:

Vertue’s statement comes at approximately 1:10 into the video, with another confirmation at approximately 5:19. Note that they state that the format will remain unchanged, with 90-minute episodes, though the number of episodes appears to still be up in the air.

Update: And, also picked up by BBC news and the Radio Times.

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Sherlock is over (for now), and regardless of our opinions on the final few minutes of “The Great Game,” most of us were left wanting more…

Now, don’t get too excited, this is very likely an error or a typo as I can’t find any information about this on the BBC websites, but the IMDB has listed the unaired, 55-minute pilot of “A Study In Pink” as airing on August 22nd. Here’s a screencap from the IMDB page:

Again, the IMDB is often wrong about this kind of thing, but we thought it was worth mentioning. Hopefully someone involved in the production can clear this up for us sometime soon, and we’ll update with further info if and when we get any.

Update: As we assumed, yes, it was an error. Sue Vertue tweeted at us:

So, if you’d like to see the pilot, pre-order those DVDs and Blu-Rays! We’ve got links on the sidebar.

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One more poll for this (short) series of Sherlock — like with the previous two episodes, we’re running a poll on the sidebar. The previous two episodes enjoyed great popularity with our blog’s visitors, will that success continue with “The Great Game”?

So, c’mon, communicate your opinions with just one click! Do it now!

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The finale of Sherlock surged in the overnight ratings, with the highest numbers of any episode in the short series, 7.34 million (compare that to 6.442 million for “The Blind Banker” and 7.05 million for “A Study In Pink”). Digital Spy reports:

BBC One’s Sherlock attracted a total audience of 7.34m (31.3%) for its Moriarty cliffhanger last night, according to overnight data.

‘The Great Game’, written by Mark Gatiss, pulled in 7.01m (29.9%) on BBC One, alongside a further 325k on HD.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes has been popular with both viewers and critics, with the first three-part series averaging a strong 7.2m.

Truly amazing ratings for the series overall, and all of this before the timeshifted numbers come in. We’ll pass along the finale’s appreciation index numbers when we get them.

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Here’s one more open thread, this time for tonight’s Sherlock finale “The Great Game,” written by the inestimably fantastic Mark Gatiss and directed by Paul McGuigian. Reminder: Like “A Study In Pink,” tonight’s episode begins at 9pm on BBC1, not 8:30pm like last week.

Use the comments here to express your thoughts on the episode before, during, or after the episode. Or, if you’d rather, jump on into our thread for “The Great Game” in the Sherlocking Forum. Join in as you’re watching and let everyone know what you think in real time — or hop in after it’s over, and share your thoughts on the explosive finale.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for one more “what did you think?” poll tomorrow morning!

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It appears there’s an impromptu Sherlock marathon going on over the internets, with IRC channel set up on EFNet for watchers to chat as they review “A Study in Pink” and “The Blind Banker” before tonight’s “The Great Game.” Click on the link, pick a name for yourself, and join the channel #BakerStreet.

We’re about 20 minutes into “A Study In Pink” right now — join us!

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As it’s “Great Game” Day, it’s time to put a close to our previous week’s poll, on what you thought of “The Blind Banker.” Looks again like the a vast majority rated this episode quite well, though not quite to the heights of “A Study In Pink.” The modal response out of 403 voters rating this episode was “Quite good” (myself included), our second highest notch, with 89% of the voters having a positive rating of the episode. This is down from the 99%+ positive from last week’s poll, and it’s notable that we had a small cluster of five votes rate the episode the lowest possible (“Horrible”), when we had zero votes in that category last week.

We’ve been very critical of certain aspects of “The Blind Banker,” and perhaps similar issues are what led people to those “Horrible” votes. But, we’re still optimistic and came away from “The Blind Banker” with a generally positive impression of the episode and the series’ prospects. It seems many of you did as well. Only a few hours until “The Great Game” transmits — stop back tomorrow morning for a final episode poll!

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