New Year New Sexy

A CIA agent, tied to a chair, beaten and thrown from a window, lands on some bins. Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes explains his avenging action: "Mrs Hudson's been attacked by an American, I'm just restoring balance to the universe". This first episode of the long-awaited second series of the BBC's Sherlock, aired on New Year's Day, is so full of subversive lines and images that quickly rise and fade yet ultimately permeate the memory, that I'm compelled to announce this as a work of some art and artfulness. There's balance and beauty to intent and vision, light surfaces on darker depths - and it's funny, moving and sexy. It does not pall on repeat viewings. Few UK writers, producers and crew are allowed to so playfully experiment in the pursuit of TV creative greatness - a mass medium more safely managed by eyeing domestic and overseas audiences as growing dumb and dumber. Of course here we have only three episodes per series not ten or twenty of the sustained writing quality of certain Danish productions. Yet at nearly 10 million UK viewers, Sherlock ratings are on a par with the highest-rated UK soap, Eastenders (9.8 million Christmas episode), while sales of books, gadgets and clothes related to the first series struggled to keep up with demand. Interestingly, culturally and politically sensitive notions are played up in this Christmas/New Year episode - a dominatrix services a young, high-ranking, female royal emanating from Buckingham Palace, American and British governments secretly collude on highly controversial anti-terrorism measures and a female beheading is visualised on Karachi soil - it's amazing that the only real 'public' (AKA Daily Mail) outcry has been about some tame, pre 9pm nudity - in itself really more tasteful camera trick and luminous skin than hard exposure. Oh and there's alot on interchangeable sexuality and, most heinous primetime TV crime of all, smoking on screen - no nicotine patches here, smoking is a theme. Sherlock moves on a notch from asperger-driven scentist and philosopher to experience love and defend THE woman. He may protest that sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side, that the chemistry of love is incredibly simple and very destructive, and that love, as he had always assumed, gives a dangerous disadvantage. Still he restores balance to the universe - he avenges Mrs Hudson and saves THE woman in high peril. Not just brains but love then. That's what we need. Definitely the NEW SEXY.