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Update: I’ve had exams for the past two weeks but I finally found time to translate the whole review. If anyone’s interested, this is it:

The fall of ‘Sherlock’

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. So, you are warned. Now we can peacefully analyse how our favourite show threw itself off a cliff – waterfall optional.

(Three stars)

“There must be something reassuring about the number three. People always give up after three”, a lying detective says in the middle of the second episode. By the end of this fourth season we were thinking the same thing: if only the makers had given up after three, indeed.

It had nevertheless started so well. Seven years ago, the Arthur Conan Doyle fanboys Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss decided to write their own fanfiction and bring Sherlock Holmes to the modern day. But 'Sherlock’ was so good that it became too popular. Lead actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman became overbooked superstars. Fans had to wait for years for seasons and in the meantime they made up so many potential scenarios that it became increasingly difficult to surprise the viewers. And look: 'Sherlock’ has become a parody, of itself and of… horror movies.

There’s already little good to say about the first episode, 'The Six Thatchers’. The death scene of Mary Watson, where she jumps faster than a bullet in front of Sherlock, is more Hollywood than BBC. Moreover, it’s hard to suddenly feel sympathetic toward a woman who shot Sherlock in the chest two episodes ago and threatened him on his sickbed. And why isn’t it Moriarty, but a plain secretary who gets to kill Mary? (Is it Administrative Professionals’ Day?)

Second episode 'The Lying Detective’ is worth five stars and brings up the average – just like Mrs Hudson. Here, John starts dealing with the death of his wife and eventually the fake suicide of his friend. The idea of the horror house has been done better by American Horror Story, the amnesia drug and the heartwrenching emotionality are Moffat at his best. Moreover, we are genuinely surprised when John’s therapist turns out to be four characters at once, and shoots him.

And with that the cat’s out of the bag: Eurus Holmes, the evil sister we never asked for, but that we got anyway. Because Moffat and Gatiss didn’t know how they could surprise us anymore. 'The Final Problem’, the most self-aware title ever, gives us the ultimate problem: do we engage in that complete madness? Is it a hommage to horror- and Bond movies, or is it the nail on our I-love-you-coffin?

Mostly, we deduce a lot of strange stuff. The hyperintelligent Eurus (kudos to Sian Brooke) has superpowers, because she can brainwash people after five minutes of smalltalk. She has modelled her long hair to the creepy girl from 'The Ring’, but can still fit two wigs underneath it. She can escape whenever, but chooses to stay in her Hannibal cell and record short movies with Moriarty. She designs a parody of 'Saw’ in her prison on Shutter Island, just for Mycroft, Sherlock and John, but right before they leave, she tries to blow them up with a grenade. Not a single scratch they suffer from that ridiculous explosion. Except maybe brain damage, because a little while later, doctor John Watson doesn’t recognise human bones anymore and the brilliant detective doesn’t quite know what exactly glass is anymore. And oh yeah, Redbeard, the dog we saw Sherlock pet so nicely last season? He was really a repressed memory of a little boy. Who eats from a dog bowl.

Admittedly, the episode is very exciting. Too bad that everything is solved with a hug. Should you forgive your psychopathic, murderous sister anyway? That Sherlock now plays the violin with her, is supposed to show us that he has completed his emotional development. He is no longer a high-functioning sociopath, but a person with feelings, is the message. Like inspector Greg Lestrade puts it, in a nice echo to the first episode, Sherlock is not a great man but even better: a good man. But that Sherlock has a heart (and for whom that beats), we have known for a long time.