Reflections of a stormy petrel

But I wasn't happy with it either. Once again, as in the first episode, Moffatt has cheapened and flattened an opponent who was, in the original, much more interesting and many-sided. Just like Jefferson Hope, the consumptive cabman carrying out a long-delayed and well-deserved vengeance, was reduced to an assassin - however clever - in the service of Moriarty, so Irene Adler, the brilliant actress and adventuress with ambitions to respectability and who felt badly treated by her royal lover, has been flattened into a prostitute whose cleverness, again, is her only redeeming feature. And frankly I don't believe in intellectually impressive dominatrices - the trade has too much to do with taking advantage of the easy target of inadequate male self-image to provide much stimulus for the intellect. The story wasn't a failure; Moffat is a master in keeping the reader on the hop by the constant use of red herrings and surprises, which is indeed a very Holmesian thing to do, and the thread of reasoning is mostly quite ingenious. But there is a certain inability to perceive subtlety and nobility which actually seems to me a defining feature of much contemporary imagination. Just as Peter Jackson coarsened every noble character in Lord of The Rings, so Steven Moffatt coarsens and flattens Jefferson Hope and Irene Adler.