'Sherlock' Season 4 was actually great, despite what the haters say (2024)

The BBC crime drama Sherlock is the most popular adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s infamous Sherlock Holmes stories. Premiering way back in 2010 — in the days when DVDs still triumphed over streaming —the show built its buzz slowly in the United States, but it wasn’t long before the show blossomed into a full-blown cultural phenomenon worldwide. Fans of the series flocked to conventions, raising the profile of stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Freeman (John Watson), and the show built viewership throughout its first three seasons. However, fans turned on the show during its fourth season for reasons that remain baffling to this day.

The season, released in 2017, was widely panned by critics and audiences alike, and the finale premiered to all-time low ratings — partially credited to the episode being leaked online ahead of time. Season 4 occupies the last slot in Sherlock season rankings published by Collider and Screen Rant, and is the only installment to be considered “rotten” by Rotten Tomatoes standards.

Stuart Heritage wrote in The Guardian that Season 4 “came from a place so utterly divorced from what it ever was” and that “Sherlock has become a parody of himself,” and Christopher Stephens called the finale a “abject, flailing, noxious mess” in The Daily Mail.

Now that all four seasons of Sherlock have found a new streaming home on Hulu after it departed from Netflix in 2021, it’s time for me to speak my truth.

Season 4 of Sherlock is actually, like, really great.

By the time the season came out, the show had evolved beyond the typical formula that had made the first three seasons so successful. Crimes and mysteries were no longer at the forefront, nor were they the most treasured parts of the story. John had fallen in love, got married, and was starting a family, and the concept of “Holmes and Watson” took a backseat to very general social interactions. Season 3 was the greatest indicator of such as the episodes following Sherlock’s return to London after a long absence and John’s marriage offered half-baked mysteries sliced into larger storylines about their new domesticity.

What makes Season 4 great is that it brings the story back to its roots by returning focus to the detective duo without getting rid of any character development. The revelations around Sherlock’s forgotten sister, who was cast away to a remote mental institution during adolescence, and the grief he suffered as a young boy gave context into his solitary behavior and shatters his carefully constructed illusion of being a “high-functioning sociopath,” slash narcissistic genius.

Many of the complaints about the season are directed toward the cases being unbeliveable and far-fetched. But to that, I have to ask, “Weren’t they always?” The second episode of Season 4, “The Lying Detective,” sees Sherlock being bamboozled by someone who isn’t who she claims to be, which is a fake-out for anybody who spent the entire two-hour episode on the edge of their seat as the detective tried to make sense of the nonsense he was given, but that wasn’t the first time the show had done that. The case in Season 1’s “Hounds of Baskerville” had a similar conclusion when it was revealed that the “gigantic hound” wreaking havoc on Sherlock’s client was a mind-altering chemical weapon created on a military base.

Looking back on the season now with the benefit of hindsight, it’s obvious that the cultural phenomenon caused by the show played a major role in the season’s poor reception. Emma Dibdin briefly alluded to this in her lukewarm 2017 review of the Season 4 finale in Harper’s Bazaar, which opened with, “… either the long absence makes [fan’s] hearts grow so much fonder that they blindly adore every moment of new footage, or the long wait raises their expectations so high that the show inevitably falls short.”

Sherlock struggled to keep up with its towering fanbase and their demands. With large gaps between seasons, and each season only consisting of three 90-minute episodes, fan theories ran amuck and even the most casual viewers grew restless.

The three-year gap between seasons three and four was the greatest that the series had ever seen, and by the time Season 4 came out, viewers had already decided what they wanted the season, cases, and relationships to look like. The creators stood no chance.

That said, even when the show was “bad,” it was incredible —especially when compared to other programs of its era. Despite claims that the show fell off, the demand for a fifth installment has never gone away. If Sherlock Season 4 is disliked because of its moments of British humor, ridiculous cases, and even more ridiculous deductions, perhaps a revisit to the first season is needed.

As a character in the series, Sherlock’s behavior has always been motivated by his emotions, despite his insistent claims that he has none. Season 1 sees him shooting at his apartment wall with a gun simply because he is bored. Even the most unexpected plotlines in the fourth season, from Sherlock’s drug addiction and brushes with suicidal thoughts to his karate-chopping an empty coffin after being forced to manipulate his friend, are insanely in character. Was Season 4 bad or just deeply misunderstood by an impatient audience?

Despite the general consensus that Sherlock Season 4 wasn’t good, it stands that the season was just deeply misunderstood, as well as a victim of pent-up demand from its passionate fanbase. Hopefully the show’s new life on Hulu will see the season get the credit it deserves.