Sherlock: 10 Ridiculous Plot Points Lifted Straight From The Books

9. British Birds

Not content with allowing his closest friend to think he was dead for years, Sherlock decides that instead of just going and telling John that he faked his own death, he will disguise himself and then reveal his true identity in the most dramatic possible way. Thus we have a sequence in opening episode The Empty Hearse in which the great detective dons a bow tie, glasses and a drawn on moustache to pretend to be a French wine waiter at the restaurant where John plans to propose to his girlfriend Mary. You may put it down to having spent two years away from the civilising influence of friends, but this tactlessness in an awkward situation seems a bit much from Sherlock. One of the major criticisms of the show as an adaptation of Doyle's work is that Moffat and Gatiss' Sherlock is excessively socially maladjusted compared to his inspiration, so surely Doyle's Holmes wouldn't stoop to such trickery, would he? Yes, indeed he would. In the episode's inspiration, The Empty House, Holmes, for reasons best known to him, decides to put on a ridiculous disguise purely to interact with Watson and see if the latter recognises him. His disguise? A quirky bookseller trying to push books called British Birds, Catullus and Holy War. Sound familiar? They should, because in The Empty Hearse a patient who looks like nothing so much as one of Basil Rathbone's disguises from the classic Sherlock Holmes films offers John pornographic magazines and DVDs with very similar titles. Is he really to blame for thinking this might be another disguise prank? And Another Thing: The dirty old man patient's normal GP is named as Dr. Verner. In Doyle's story The Norwood Builder, Holmes' cousin Dr. Verner takes over Watson's practice after Holmes comes back into Watson's life.