Sherlock · Season 2 · Episode 1 · 1 January 2012
S2E1 A Scandal in Belgravia
THE MOMENT Holmes deducing Adler's phone password - the scene that made 'A Scandal in Belgravia' immortal.
Irene Adler enters the show without clothes and leaves having beaten Sherlock Holmes at his own game. The writing is the cleverest in the series - the mystery, the seduction, the reveal, all operating simultaneously. Pulver and Cumberbatch produce the show's best single performance pairing.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
Sherlock Season 2 Episode 1 'A Scandal in Belgravia' aired January 1, 2012 on BBC One. Rotten Tomatoes holds Season 2 at 94 percent; the episode holds a 9.4 individual IMDb score - among the highest for any British drama episode. The RT consensus for Season 2 called it 'Sherlock at full power - A Scandal in Belgravia alone is worth the price of the series.' The episode introduces Irene Adler not as a love interest but as an adversary who fights with the same intellectual tools as Holmes and wins. Lara Pulver's performance is the finest guest work in the series' run. The script by Steven Moffat operates on multiple levels simultaneously - the mystery, the seduction, the gender politics - integrating them without any layer cancelling the others. The password reveal is the scene the episode is known for: a deduction built on emotional information rather than forensic evidence.