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Miss Sherlock s1 (spoilers)
Even the first few episodes of Miss Sherlock are strikingly and hilariously better modernizations of and commentaries on both Granada Holmes canon and Sherlock Holmes book canon than BBC Sherlock (and also cleverer which is even funnier). Even the soundtrack is witty — it's full of references to the Granada theme, but it incorporates other references at times, including a section where it went nearly full Mission: Impossible and had me bursting out laughing.
Every adapter wants to use Moriarty to create a single narrative arc with a single big adversary, which book canon up to Reichenbach positions him for (although not well, since he only appears at the very end with Holmes handwaving that he knew all along there was a puppeteer behind the other crimes and just failed to mention it). Moriarty was already too overpowered in book canon, and his motivations a bit confused, but in tying it all together adaptations always go overboard and make him even more nonsensical.
In canon, Moriarty is profiting from his organized crime enterprises - not like a traditional organized crime boss perhaps, since he is an invisible man behind the curtain, but he is ruling his empire and his motivation is to eliminate Holmes because Holmes has so effectively been rolling up organized crime in London. He's in the way. That would have been plausible on its own, but his stalking Holmes and then going over the waterfall locked in his arms already prove a personal vendetta, an obsession, that is considerably stronger than his self interest. BBC Sherlock got so carried away by Moriarty's obsession that it forgot to give him a coherent background/aim before the obsession and origin for it. Rather than first appearing as a crime boss whose lucrative schemes are being foiled, he appears more as a sinister celebrity fan stalker in a tv movie, already concerned mainly with making his every move all about Sherlock from his first appearance.
Miss Sherlock's Moriarty claims to be motivated not by obsession with Sherlock, but by a monomaniacal desire to scientifically prove her Cambridge thesis that any person can be ~changed into a criminal by talking at them in a magical way that will modify their frontal lobe to destroy their empathy.
First of all, many of Moriarty's criminals are seeking revenge for personal tragedies, which surely doesn't involve becoming a psychopath, just getting very obsessed? So even if you accept that you can modify the frontal lobe to create a psychopath just verbally (so like... hypnosis?? or is it more like radicalization?), this explanation of her method seems suspect.
Secondly, if all she wants to do is prove that her method works scientifically, she presumably just needs publicity for her documented methods and results (since she already has the results, it must be scientific acknowledgement of them and public vindication she seeks). Since she has several successful cases in the course of the first season, it's not clear why she decides to tangle with Sherlock, who probably wouldn't trace the cases to her if she didn't target Watson. Evidently she pursues Sherlock because she believes she can use her to obtain plans for a nuclear bomb that she wants to have someone detonate - to prove her thesis about making people into criminals, again. But a much smaller disaster than that would be enough to get her that publicity.
Alternatively, you could assume she didn't seek out Watson to target Sherlock: that Watson was first led to her by chance and that Moriarty is initially just curious about Sherlock. When Sherlock foils the plot of a Moriarty-guided terrorist in the second to last episode she has definitely gotten directly in the way of said publicity, but it's a plot that unfolds right under Sherlock's nose precisely because Moriarty has gone out of her way to introduce Watson to the terrorist. Most of the previous crimes were solved afterwards, not prevented from taking place, so in those cases Sherlock's activities weren't antithetical to Moriarty's stated aims at all. If it's Sherlock stopping this attack that motivates her to target Sherlock and Watson in the last episode, it's (a) not visible in her demeanor that she's making a momentous decision or is upset about it and (b) a very risky move, essentially like waving a red flag at a bull - and that kind of escalation makes sense for a criminal who is simply obsessed with getting the better of their opponent, but it makes it less likely that this Moriarty will see her research vindicated, since she's basically daring Sherlock to stop her. If she's so narcissistic that she doesn't even consider that Sherlock might outwit her - which is kind of the impression I got from the show - that does seem to detract from the intelligence we're supposed to believe she has had all along, particularly since Sherlock has at that point already outwitted her several times in a row.
But this wasn't even the thing I was talking about in my cut tag that spoiled my enjoyment!
"What if Moriarty targeted Watson early in canon and it was thus the direct endangerment of Watson that drove Sherlock to Reichenbach?" wasn't a question I was particularly interested in seeing in a modernization - it's a big departure from book canon, or an alternate-canon AU as some might call it, and I'm less interested in those than in fan works that stay closer to canon. It's not something I inherently dislike in fanworks either though, if the change is deliberately chosen and done well - much like making Sherlock, Watson, and Moriarty female and setting the story in the present day (and/or in Japan...). I could have been fine with that if it had been well done, but since the viewer is left with no clear understanding of why Moriarty did target Watson, or indeed why she engaged with Sherlock, I can't say they really engaged with the question properly.
But the main problem was that as a result of being targeted by Moriarty, Watson's characterization changes.
Watson's faith in Holmes is absolute, and his loyalty is surely one of the most important aspects of his character. But in Miss Sherlock when Watson sees Sherlock shoot Watson's boyfriend, who has turned out to be the terrorist, she doesn't appear to even consider why (even though she's well aware that they're trying to stop someone from obliterating Tokyo with a deadly virus); and after the fact she seems totally uncurious about the specifics of what happened, let alone disinterested in explanation from Sherlock. At this point she appears to be wholly hypnotized, which could explain these reactions; except if Moriarty could simply control people with hypnosis, why would she need to draw on their internal desire for revenge in the first place? Perhaps the grief is what makes Watson vulnerable to Moriarty's hypnosis, but again... that's doesn't seem very Watson-like.
Of course, you can ask what would happen if Watson saw Sherlock kill Mary, but... no matter how upset he was, I just don't think he would immediately think "Sherlock is a murderer and I will listen to no explanations of any kind and don't even want to know what happened before I kill him in revenge!" Watson knows that Sherlock wouldn't just kill Mary, or anyone.
Also, the timeline of the show is hard to follow, but it doesn't seem possible that Watson has been seeing her boyfriend for more than a month or so tops at this point and they're not even cohabiting. Of course, Watson is gallant and whole-heartedly loving, so he would probably still be devastated by such an event, but it wouldn't be as life-changing an event as the canon death of Mary.
Every adapter wants to use Moriarty to create a single narrative arc with a single big adversary, which book canon up to Reichenbach positions him for (although not well, since he only appears at the very end with Holmes handwaving that he knew all along there was a puppeteer behind the other crimes and just failed to mention it). Moriarty was already too overpowered in book canon, and his motivations a bit confused, but in tying it all together adaptations always go overboard and make him even more nonsensical.
In canon, Moriarty is profiting from his organized crime enterprises - not like a traditional organized crime boss perhaps, since he is an invisible man behind the curtain, but he is ruling his empire and his motivation is to eliminate Holmes because Holmes has so effectively been rolling up organized crime in London. He's in the way. That would have been plausible on its own, but his stalking Holmes and then going over the waterfall locked in his arms already prove a personal vendetta, an obsession, that is considerably stronger than his self interest. BBC Sherlock got so carried away by Moriarty's obsession that it forgot to give him a coherent background/aim before the obsession and origin for it. Rather than first appearing as a crime boss whose lucrative schemes are being foiled, he appears more as a sinister celebrity fan stalker in a tv movie, already concerned mainly with making his every move all about Sherlock from his first appearance.
Miss Sherlock's Moriarty claims to be motivated not by obsession with Sherlock, but by a monomaniacal desire to scientifically prove her Cambridge thesis that any person can be ~changed into a criminal by talking at them in a magical way that will modify their frontal lobe to destroy their empathy.
First of all, many of Moriarty's criminals are seeking revenge for personal tragedies, which surely doesn't involve becoming a psychopath, just getting very obsessed? So even if you accept that you can modify the frontal lobe to create a psychopath just verbally (so like... hypnosis?? or is it more like radicalization?), this explanation of her method seems suspect.
Secondly, if all she wants to do is prove that her method works scientifically, she presumably just needs publicity for her documented methods and results (since she already has the results, it must be scientific acknowledgement of them and public vindication she seeks). Since she has several successful cases in the course of the first season, it's not clear why she decides to tangle with Sherlock, who probably wouldn't trace the cases to her if she didn't target Watson. Evidently she pursues Sherlock because she believes she can use her to obtain plans for a nuclear bomb that she wants to have someone detonate - to prove her thesis about making people into criminals, again. But a much smaller disaster than that would be enough to get her that publicity.
Alternatively, you could assume she didn't seek out Watson to target Sherlock: that Watson was first led to her by chance and that Moriarty is initially just curious about Sherlock. When Sherlock foils the plot of a Moriarty-guided terrorist in the second to last episode she has definitely gotten directly in the way of said publicity, but it's a plot that unfolds right under Sherlock's nose precisely because Moriarty has gone out of her way to introduce Watson to the terrorist. Most of the previous crimes were solved afterwards, not prevented from taking place, so in those cases Sherlock's activities weren't antithetical to Moriarty's stated aims at all. If it's Sherlock stopping this attack that motivates her to target Sherlock and Watson in the last episode, it's (a) not visible in her demeanor that she's making a momentous decision or is upset about it and (b) a very risky move, essentially like waving a red flag at a bull - and that kind of escalation makes sense for a criminal who is simply obsessed with getting the better of their opponent, but it makes it less likely that this Moriarty will see her research vindicated, since she's basically daring Sherlock to stop her. If she's so narcissistic that she doesn't even consider that Sherlock might outwit her - which is kind of the impression I got from the show - that does seem to detract from the intelligence we're supposed to believe she has had all along, particularly since Sherlock has at that point already outwitted her several times in a row.
But this wasn't even the thing I was talking about in my cut tag that spoiled my enjoyment!
"What if Moriarty targeted Watson early in canon and it was thus the direct endangerment of Watson that drove Sherlock to Reichenbach?" wasn't a question I was particularly interested in seeing in a modernization - it's a big departure from book canon, or an alternate-canon AU as some might call it, and I'm less interested in those than in fan works that stay closer to canon. It's not something I inherently dislike in fanworks either though, if the change is deliberately chosen and done well - much like making Sherlock, Watson, and Moriarty female and setting the story in the present day (and/or in Japan...). I could have been fine with that if it had been well done, but since the viewer is left with no clear understanding of why Moriarty did target Watson, or indeed why she engaged with Sherlock, I can't say they really engaged with the question properly.
But the main problem was that as a result of being targeted by Moriarty, Watson's characterization changes.
Watson's faith in Holmes is absolute, and his loyalty is surely one of the most important aspects of his character. But in Miss Sherlock when Watson sees Sherlock shoot Watson's boyfriend, who has turned out to be the terrorist, she doesn't appear to even consider why (even though she's well aware that they're trying to stop someone from obliterating Tokyo with a deadly virus); and after the fact she seems totally uncurious about the specifics of what happened, let alone disinterested in explanation from Sherlock. At this point she appears to be wholly hypnotized, which could explain these reactions; except if Moriarty could simply control people with hypnosis, why would she need to draw on their internal desire for revenge in the first place? Perhaps the grief is what makes Watson vulnerable to Moriarty's hypnosis, but again... that's doesn't seem very Watson-like.
Of course, you can ask what would happen if Watson saw Sherlock kill Mary, but... no matter how upset he was, I just don't think he would immediately think "Sherlock is a murderer and I will listen to no explanations of any kind and don't even want to know what happened before I kill him in revenge!" Watson knows that Sherlock wouldn't just kill Mary, or anyone.
Also, the timeline of the show is hard to follow, but it doesn't seem possible that Watson has been seeing her boyfriend for more than a month or so tops at this point and they're not even cohabiting. Of course, Watson is gallant and whole-heartedly loving, so he would probably still be devastated by such an event, but it wouldn't be as life-changing an event as the canon death of Mary.
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