That 'Sherlock' thing.

I like a bit of schlocky TV drama as much as the next internet wrongmo. Well, actually, no I don't. I can't abide the majority of TV drama, which is why I missed the entire first series of 'Sherlock' on the BBC. That and taking a violent and irrational dislike to the name Benedict Cumberbatch. It's not his fault, of course, it's just that the name reeks of public school privilege and strikes directly at the heart of my chippiness about class. I had the same thing with Miranda Hart - "bloody BBC overrun by public school types" etc. Then, after refusing to watch her first series and grudgingly tuning in to a later epsiode it turned out that she is extremely funny. Nose, face, spite etc.

So, anway, to save keep repeating this over and over, here's the shadwell version of what was going on in "The Reichenbach Fall", Series 2 Episode 3 of the BBC's 'Sherlock' :

How did Sherlock fake his own death?

Well, it's not hugely complex, but it required a bit of help. When Watson turns up at the hospital, Holmes makes him walk back to a position away from the building and look straight up at him. What's not obvious in the epsiode, with the camera angles following Holmes and Watson's line of sight, is that there is a low, flat-rooved building between the position Watson is made to stand and the street below Holmes, which obscures it completely. That is to say, Watson can see Holmes on the roof, but he can't see the street where he later lands.

If that's still not clear, this is Watson's view of the hospital, as seen on Google streetview: http://g.co/maps/j3zwt

Remember also that a Streetview camera is roughly 12ft off the ground, compared to Watson's 5' 8" or thereabouts, so he would have had even less of a view of the lower part of the hospital building.

So, with the street completely obscured, the potential for 'rigging' the landing zone becomes considerably easier. And so it is. Plenty of people have noticed the pick-truck type which pulls away from the bus stop laden with bin bags. It's sometimes described as a rubbish collecting truck, but I'm going with laundry collection: lots of nice poomfy bags of bedding to drop onto. Of course, it would be a brave person who jumped from a tall building into a truck bed with wire cage sides, no matter how many bags of laundry were in it. Miss by a foot, hit the side and it's game over.

But with those drop-down sides folded out flat and your poomfy laundry bags spread out, you've got a nice big crash mat. You would need to brace the sides in the horizontal, but with a few people on the ground to hold it, it would't be too hard.

Then, once your man has landed, he jumps off onto the ground, up go the sides, (pushing all the bags into the middle) and away goes the truck. Of course, even with a well-rehearsed routine, it's going to take a few seconds to complete, so you might need someone on hand to delay your witness's arrival slightly. Enter the chappy on the bike, who simultaneously delays and disorientates Watson by means of a good whack to the side.

So now our man is off the roof and on the ground. But who is it that goes off the roof? Moriarty? A dead body provided by Molly? Molly herself?  Nah, none of the above. The somewhat over-the-top swimming motion during the fall gives the lie to the idea that it is a dead or unconscious body and, while the figure on the roof does have a somewhat 'principal boyish' stance at times from Watson's viewpoint, Holmes is the hero: he wouldn't get anyone else to take the fall for him.

And so now Holmes is on the ground, lying on the pavement about a pick-up truck's unfolded cage-side distance from the kerb. We need to add some gore, so on goes the ketchup, courtesy of the team on the ground. But also, Watson has to be convinced that Holmes is dead. We see him attempt to take Holmes's pulse, before his hand is pulled away by one of the assistants on the ground. Of course, in his disorientated state, he may have been unable to detect a pulse in the time he had available. But equally, there's a good chance that Holmes had another trick up his sleeve.

There is some speculation that Holmes used the squash ball seen earlier in the episode to slow his heart-rate by squeezing it into his armpit a la Derren Brown. Maybe, but you would have a job keeping it in place after taking a dive off a tall building and once the ball is dislodged the pulse would come back, more than likely at a good rate under the circumstances. It could, however, have been a pointer to another means of achieving the same effect: bradycardia (slowing of the pulse) induced by the use of an extract of Rhododendron Ponticum.

Rhododendron Ponticum (or 'Ponticon' as Sherlock pronounces it) gets a mention earlier in the episode in relation to the discovery of the children in the disused factory. Among its other effects, rhododendron poisoning causes the heart-rate to slow dramatically, thus making it impossible for Watson to detect a pulse in the short time before his hand as pulled away. Additionally what appeared to be Holmes' emotional state during his conversation with Watson, was actually the physiological effects of the poison.

There's more about Rhododendron Ponticum toxicity and reference to its use as a poison in Guy Ritchie's 2009 Sherlock Holmes film at:

http://www.aschoonerofscience.com/poisons/rhododendron-poison-truth-behind-the-science-of-sherlock-holmes/

In a nutshell, then, so far we have Holmes downing an extract of rhododendron to simulate death, jumping off the roof into a rigged truck, then onto the pavement where he gets a splash of gore for effect and Watson taking a whack from a conveniently clumsy cyclist to slow him down a bit. What's left?

Well, we know that Holmes has previously approached Molly for assistance in his plot and that he has chosen her place of work for his staged demise. So, with Watson apparently convinced that Holmes is dead, the body is whisked onto a gurney and into the hospital where Molly presumably takes charge of it and administers the necessary antidotes, before spiriting Holmes away into the bowels of the St Bartholomew's Hospital pathology department to spend the next however many months living on a diet of crisps.

Though, come to think of it, of course... it wasn't only Watson who tried to take Holmes's pulse. There was a hopsital doctor on the other side taking a carotid pulse before Holmes was lifted on the gurney and rushed away. Which action, by its very haste suggests that this doctor believed Holmes to still be alive. Fortunately, Watson quickly followed his best friend inside to see whether this was the case... oh, hold on. No he didn't. He sat by the bench looking all wistful and confused.

But hey, it's only TV... and I like it.

Next up: What the heck was all that about? A run down on what was actually going on in the episode.