Ranking Sherlock: Best to Worst

I'm with Benedict in not doing favorites. There are things I like and dislike about each of the episodes. Each one is unique and special.

I love, love, love the two original songs written for ASIB, and especially how the two tunes twine together at the close of the episode.

There were many things to dislike about TBB, but some really great scenes are in it as well.

I had tears streaming down my face at Mary's death in T6T, even though I don't really love Mary that much.

TFP was crazy but brilliant.

Ranking "best" to "worst" just doesn't work for me, especially when it comes to Sherlock. Like you said, even the weakest episodes have a great deal of merit.

Someone started a episode ranking thread over on the Sherlock board. Since I don't have a twitter to participate in Arwel's informal poll, I thought I'd post my list here.

I find it tough to rate them absolutely. So here they are in rough rank order, but grouped. Individual episodes shuffle around a bit depending on the day.

Fantastic – Just about perfect
A Study in Pink
The Great Game
The Reichenbach Fall
The Lying Detective

Really Really Great - Tweak just a few things and they’d be perfect. Each offers some really amazing visual storytelling. IMO, each would pop into the top category if Mofftiss resisted dialing some things up to 11

A Scandal in Belgravia
The Abominable Bride
His Last Vow
The Final Problem (with some willing suspension of disbelief on my part, though I suppose that's true for just about every episode :P)

Really Good – Solid Entertainment, on a different day I might put them in the Really Really great category

The Hounds of Baskerville
The Sign of Three

Good, but flawed - some issues with story, character, or visuals, still each have some fantastic scenes; Better than most TV

The Six Thatchers
The Empty Hearse
The Blind Banker


Have a lovely day - John Finnemore

Swap 'The Great Game' with 'A Scandal in Belgravia', and 'His Last Vow' with 'The Empty Hearse' and that's pretty much my list too, Hannah. I mean I think there are quite a few not-so-great elements to Scandal, but what it gets right it just gets so right that it's in my TOP3 regardless of the stuff I don't enjoy as much.

The Empire list is ok. Closer to my opinion than most of these "best to worst" lists. Mostly because I think 'The Empty Hearse' is the best episode of series 3, something which I don't think is necessarily a common opinion, so I'm glad to see it get some love. 


Do you even know what honor is?
- A horse.

Well, I agree with their top choice, but that's about it.  I notice any time people list their most/least favorite episodes, there's a wide difference of opinion other than the poor Blind Banker usually being fairly far down. I have trouble picking between all of the episodes, and a lot of them are tied for me. I have my top few, and bottom few, but the middle ones could really move around in ranking depending on which I've seen most recently.

Arthur, put the kettle on and dig out those lemon hand wipes.

I have to go along with you when you said that Sherlock doesn't have a worst episode - that''s what I feel as well.

I guess when picking a favourite I would have to go with the one episode I have replayed the most to be my favourite - which would be The Sign of Three. I love everything about that episode, but especially the humour in it.

Now for the new season, which of course, I haven't seen as much as the past ones - I would have to say that The Final Problem ranks right up with The Sign of Three for me now. But then I do think The Lying Detective was just as good. The Six Thatchers was perhaps just a notch below the other two but it wasn't because I thought it was lacking in some way. It was more a case of that it seemed more unfinished (which it had to be really) where the other two episodes had more of a completeness about them (even with the small "cliffhanger" aspect of the end of The Lying Detective).

I certainly think that when it comes to a year from now I will probably be rewatching TFP a bit more than the other two.

So I guess it would be a tie for me - TSoT and TFP are my two favs. And I just couldn't pick between those two, so that it as close as I get to a favourite.

As for ranking any of the others in some kind of order... I just can't. If I had someone just pop one episode in the DVD player, by random chance, there wouldn't be any one of them that I would be even slightly disappointed with the choice when it started up. No "oh gosh, too bad they picked that one!" at all. Any of those other episodes would absolutely be met with the same level of enthusiasm by me when it started to roll!

Mainly I would be saying "Oh, goody! I get to see Sherlock!!!"

:-))

"You're going into the water... short-arse!"
- Sherlock

Mainly I would be saying "Oh, goody! I get to see Sherlock!!!"
Ha! I know what you mean.

Even though I can look back at the episodes and put them into lists or groups, in reality the episode I happen to be watching is my favourite. It's like the other episodes don't exist. I never think "This is ok, but I know the next one is better".

A couple of summers ago, I binge-watched a few tv shows that I'd been wanting to see. With a show like Breaking Bad, where the entire series tells one story, you can't really tell when one episode ends and the next begins. With a show like Midsomer Murders, each episode tells a different story, but you quickly notice a pattern that makes the episodes resemble each other. But with Sherlock, even when the storylines carry over from one episode to the next, the episodes are so different in look, feel, mood. So it really feels like you're watching something brand-new each time. I think that's one of the reasons it stands apart from anything else on tv.

the episodes are so different in look, feel, mood

I think that is why some people's "best to worst" choices are exactly reversed from each other! The episodes are so different, it's almost not even like the same show. Whereas with some shows, most people will pick the same handful of episodes as their favorite (Seinfeld? The Soup Nazi! etc.) but with Sherlock, some rank the detective work-heavy episodes higher and others the relationship-heavy episodes. Their taste can be very opposite.

Arthur, put the kettle on and dig out those lemon hand wipes.

Whereas with some shows, most people will pick the same handful of episodes as their favorite (Seinfeld? The Soup Nazi! etc.)
OT - A funny thing about Seinfeld: after the series ended I had no interest in watching it again, even though I loved it. I think it was years before I watched the repeats (which are on tv somewhere, every day). People usually refer to the episodes by a storyline, like the Soup Nazi episode, or the Yada Yada episode, or the Puffy Shirt episode. But when you rewatch them, you realize that the Soup Nazi, Yada Yada and Puffy Shirt episodes were actually all the same episode. (I don't think that example is correct, but you get the idea). It's very impressive that they juggled so many crazy and memorable stories within one episode.