In this first real brush with James Moriarty, the notorious arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes going back to the original stories, The Great Game presents a kind of plot that is perfect for a Sherlock Holmes story: what happens when the 'Game' of it becomes the whole point, and that a mystery wraps into a riddle and then another mystery, all leading to a painting that may (or may not!) be a fake. At the start of the episode Sherlock is bored with the cases he's been having and is then rocked into one by an explosion that rocks his own 221 Baker street home. Then there's the big 'plot' of the thing, where people keep turning up with phone calls, frightened voices, and bombs attached to them. Will they go off or will Holmes follow the game to where it needs to go and crack the codes and so on?
He does, and the fun in watching this episode/film is how Holmes realizes that the man behind all of this is Moriarty, which makes him have to turn up the stakes for himself (more than usual anyway, which are already petty high), and it becomes one of the better stories for this Sherlock a) Cumberbatch is so good, b) Freeman matches up (or tries to keep up) with his co-star, and c) when Andrew Scott finally appears as Moriarty, he really brings it and makes a big impression. I love this Moriarty as a man who is super-intelligent, but also wants to see Holmes as something more extraordinary, not just another ordinary person. Moriarty is a freak, but so is Holmes, and they complete each other in that odd way of nemeses. That scene alone, the climax of the thing (and how it does a twist, and then maybe another twist, in the showdown), is worth watching the episode all on its own.
