A Study in Pink

It is London in 2010, and a war hero invalided home from Afghanistan is about to meet a strange, charismatic genius who needs a flatmate. The genius is Sherlock Holmes, the soldier is Dr John Watson, and the flat is 221B Baker Street. Holmes sizes up the stranger before introductions are finished, and the reading is so sharp it comes out as rudeness. That either of them agrees to the arrangement says something about both their judgement, and the show has a lot of fun with the awkwardness before the serious work starts.

The serious work is a string of impossible suicides. Scotland Yard is baffled, the deaths look like choices people freely made, and nobody can explain the pattern. Only one man can help, and Lestrade knows it even if he'd rather not. So Holmes and Watson are thrown together professionally almost before they've learned each other's habits, and the partnership is tested in public from day one. Watson's eyes are the useful ones here; he sees the human cost of each death, which Holmes tends to file under data.

Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote it, Paul McGuigan directed, and the cast is a fine first team: Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, Martin Freeman as Watson, Rupert Graves as DI Lestrade, Una Stubbs as Mrs Hudson, Louise Brealey as Molly Hooper, Vinette Robinson as Sgt Sally Donovan, William Scott-Masson and Victoria Wicks as Sir Jeffrey and Margaret Patterson, Siobhan Hewlett as Helen and Tanya Moodie as Ella, the therapist who hears rather more than she bargained for.

What carries it is the pairing. Freeman's Watson is a proper soldier, and he isn't there to take notes. Cumberbatch's Holmes is rude and brilliant in the right proportions. The case is good, but the chemistry is the point, and it survives every test the episode puts it through. And that's lucky, because the show was about to need it.