BBC Sherlock: A Drama In Five Acts
Think the show is over? Think again.
Contents
[Recommended Reading: Poetry or Truth? Part One and Two]
I. Meet John Yorke
II. Story as Argument
III. Human Nature
IV. The Becoming of Sherlock Holmes
I feel creatively stifled by the BBC every single day — but I’m a writer and ‘creatively stifled’ counts as anything short of an instant series commission, a guaranteed second series, a cuddle, a guaranteed third series, and a whispered invitation back to ‘my place’ (where I’ll explain that really I’ve got a five-series arc in mind, and a spin-off.)
— Steven Moffat, July 2009 (x)
Rather excitingly, Mark and I, for no particular reason, we just got out of the rain and sat at the top of the [Sherlock] production bus … and we just started plotting out what we could do in the future.
And we plotted out the whole of Series Four and Five.
— Steven Moffat, January 2014 (x)
I began this meta series with the goal of explaining the meaning of The Final Problem. TFP is chock full of meaning, once you’re able to decode it.
But the key to understanding the meaning of TFP lies in where the episode falls within the overall structure of the show. It requires orientation with the frame of the whole story, the end of which, of course, does not yet exist. The significance comes not only from the things that are shown, but the sequence in which they appear.
That means that before we can get into the meaning of TFP, we have to first anticipate the final structure of the completed story. Templates for story structure are as numerous and varied as the stories that are built upon them. But how can we know which template is being used? How can we even know for sure that there is a template being used?
There’s also a lot of books that attempt to unify story structure — to use a universal template to explain what means what when placed where according to the inherent fractal structure of all stories.
This meta is about a book about story structure that I think gives particular insight into BBC Sherlock.
It’s called Into The Woods by John Yorke.
So why, you ask, does this particular book deserve our undivided attention on this subject in the context of BBC Sherlock?
I. Meet John Yorke
John Yorke is a drama producer, author and teacher who has spent 30 years studying our insatiable appetite for stories. His long career in TV drama has given him the tools to identify the underlying shape common to all successful narratives — from drama to corporate reports. (x)
John Yorke works in television. British television, specifically. He’s probably best known for his longtime involvement with the soap EastEnders. He started as a storyliner for its first BAFTA-winning season, eventually rising to script editor, producer, and executive producer. Just this summer, he made a celebrated return to the show as interim creative director.
Beginning in 2002, Yorke began working more centrally for the BBC’s drama department. Between 2005 and 2012, his titles at the (perpetually restructuring) BBC included:
- Head, New Talent
- Co-Head, Independent Drama Commissioning
- Controller, BBC Drama Series
- Controller, BBC Drama Production
- Controller, Continuing Drama Production Studios
He certainly crossed paths with future Controller of Drama Commissioning Ben Stephenson, who first joined the BBC in 2004 as Head of Development for Independent Drama.
His real niche in the world of television, however, seems to be teaching screenwriting. As Head of New Talent, he founded the BBC Writers Academy in 2005. Per his BBC employee bio from 2009, Yorke “set up and continues to run Producer and Director training programmes across the industry, lectures widely across the UK on working for television, and is Visiting Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.”
Sum together all these roles, and you begin to understand why Yorke has been called “the man responsible for more hours of drama on British television than anyone else.”
So: let’s rewind to 2005.
In 2005, BBC commissioned a high-concept, six 1-hour episode miniseries: a modern twist on an iconic character.
The show was commissioned by John Yorke, BBC’s Head of Independent Drama at the time.
That show was Steven Moffat’s Jekyll.
Three years after Jekyll, in 2008, BBC commissioned a 1-hour pilot episode of a high-concept miniseries: a modern twist on an iconic character. The show was commissioned by freshly promoted Controller of BBC Drama Commissioning, Ben Stephenson.
That show, as we know, was Steven Moffat’s (and Mark Gatiss’) Sherlock.
But something interesting happened with Sherlock: after filming that pilot episode, the 1-hour episode format was renegotiated and reworked into a miniseries consisting of three 90-minute films. There was never much explanation given for the change, but the budget grew and the show was a hit and that was that. I had certainly never questioned the rationale of the BBC exec whose reaction to seeing Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman interact on-screen was to open the chequebook and demand ‘more!’ and ‘prettier!’
I didn’t question the BBC’s rationale until I got my hands on John Yorke’s book.
His book assembles all the most well-known prescriptive models of story structure before distilling them from how they’re meant to work into why they do. He traces the evolution of narrative structure through the conventions and inventions of theatre, literature, film, and television. He contrasts the types of stories that work well as finite miniseries versus multiplex franchises, explores why middles slouch and fourth acts routinely disappoint, and touches on everything from fractals to Freud.
But his overarching thesis, the structure that his own book is built upon, is the resilience of the five-act structure. Specifically, five acts each made up of three parts.
Three acts.
Repeated five times.
To put this another way: in 2008, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss pitched a show about a modern Sherlock Holmes that, as planned, likely would have followed the same template and episode structure as Moffat’s previous project, Jekyll.
But the show that ultimately came out of the BBC internal commissioning process looked a lot less like Jekyll and a lot more like the archetypal story structure prescribed by the same person who reviewed — and we can presume directly discussed and critiqued — the structure of Moffat’s Jekyll: long-serving BBC drama executive and screenwriting teacher John Yorke.
The evidence is circumstantial but compelling:
(a) It’s indisputable that John Yorke was perfectly positioned and well-qualified in 2008 to have a major influence over the structure of BBC Sherlock.
(b) It appears likely that Yorke did have some degree of influence, given the similarities between his five-act model and the show’s final form.
We can imagine the various forms Yorke’s influence may have taken: Yorke’s direct intercession; a seed planted back when Yorke reviewed Moffat’s pitch for Jekyll; a fusion of genius engineered by fellow drama commissioner and colleague Ben Stephenson; or simply an organic byproduct of Yorke’s considerable influence as a prolific screenwriting teacher, speaker, and guest lecturer in the same primordial BBC Drama stew from whence all British television assembles its genetics and crawls forth. Assuming their awareness of Yorke’s pet philosophy, we can even imagine Moffat or Gatiss themselves suggesting the idea in order to have the force of ‘legendary’ BBC drama exec John Yorke personally invested in their pie-in-the-sky dreams of allowing Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to finally kiss.
These scenarios — while all deliriously fun to contemplate — cannot be proved or disproved. The question we are able to pursue productively is: what does Yorke’s philosophy of narrative — as outlined in his book — bring to the table, and what does that philosophy add to our understanding of BBC Sherlock?
The message of a book code depends upon the book. If we presume the cipher of the show is Yorke’s book, what’s the message?
II. Story as Argument
“All storytelling is an argument — argument is at the heart of its being.”
— John Yorke, Into the Woods
The first thing you’ll notice about Yorke’s philosophy is his idea that storytelling is relevant, not just for telling stories, but for creating everything from scientific reports, business presentations, legal arguments, and sales pitches. On the one hand, it’s a brilliant marketing strategy for his series of online courses. But it’s also a roundabout way of saying that stories are arguments, too. Stories present an idea, test the validity and scope of that idea against its opposite, and reconcile the two.
Yorke’s philosophy of story is so universal because his model is based on a structure that is already universal to human perception and reasoning: the dialectical method, which is a conversational process of resolving two opposing or contradictory points of view. When Yorke says stories are made up of three-part units, he’s talking about the building blocks of the dialectical method: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The tension of a story is created when the author puts forth a thesis and then confronts it with its antithesis. The story ends when the tension resolves, i.e. synthesis.
“…as Hitchcock said, a film is only as good as its villain; drama can only really work when it fulfills its structural duty to validate both sides. A story is only as good as its counter-argument…”
Yorke’s framework of five acts is as old as Shakespeare, but he explains it through a layering of this three-part structure. Acknowledging the notorious ‘sagging middle’ that plagues storytellers across all media, Yorke subdivides the middle act into three components to create his five acts. He then breaks those five acts down further into three parts each, creating an incredibly distinctive structure not found anywhere in television except, we may presume, in BBC Sherlock.
These parts can be further structured and broken down, layer by layer, until the repeating fractal pattern can be mapped down to the scene, down to each volley of dialogue. At smaller scales, the pacing tightens up and the synthesis of one triad becomes the thesis of the next. Negation, followed by negation, followed by negation, approaching truth, approaching resolution.
Thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
This fractal construction makes Yorke’s model adaptable across all storytelling media. Five acts too many? Too few? Just reassemble the three-part units in a configuration that suits the story you’re trying to tell. Or don’t think about it at all — Yorke shows how the pattern emerges in nearly all successful stories, even ones by writers who disavow story structure as pseudoscience.
With five acts, Yorke easily identifies the inciting incident (thesis, Act One) and the climax, or what he calls ‘the worst point’ (synthesis-of-the-antithesis, Act Four). If story is an argument, the thesis is stated in the first act, and the three acts of antithesis that follow put that argument to the test. Act Three — the story’s midpoint — is the antithesis-of-the-antithesis, a double negative that gives us our first glimpse of the story pivoting toward the author’s answer to the question posed in Act One.
You can begin to see why Yorke’s idea of ‘story as argument’ might have appealed to Moffat and Gatiss for this particular project. To say that you think “everybody’s been getting wrong, and we think we can get it right” is already taking an antagonistic stance, pitting your thesis against everyone else’s.
We already knew the show was an argument. Yorke explains that the argument is made by the story’s theme, which plays out between the inciting incident and the worst point.
III. Human Nature
“The dialectical theory we’ve used to explain dramatic structure so far is most commonly termed Hegelian — after the nineteenth-century philosopher’s belief that a new stage is created from the synthesis of two opposites.”
The triads that make up Yorke’s five-act stories trace their origins back to the work of the nineteenth-century philosopher Hegel. (If you aren’t already conversational in philosophy, I know I sound like I’m already three miles into the weeds, but bear with me! It will pay off.)
Hegel didn’t use the terms ‘thesis-antithesis-synthesis,’ but he did codify all of human perception in a series of more poetic triads, like ‘Being-Nothing-Becoming.’ Being-Nothing-Becoming is a good example of how his triads work in general: two static opposites which — when combined — take on a new dimension of meaning as the transition between the two.
The most straightforward explanation of Hegel’s philosophy comes from comparing him to his predecessor, Kant. Hegel and Kant each described a different philosophy of human nature, both of which have parallels to the way we tell stories today.
Kant’s philosophy is the idea of human nature as a two-dimensional, zero-sum, unresolvable divide between higher reason and base physical self-interest. A person’s whole life is a tug-of-war between animalistic urges and a higher sense of moral/duty/ethic that keeps those lower, less civilized urges in check. For the mind to win, the body must necessarily lose.
After Kant established his idea of eternally warring impulses within the human psyche, Hegel came along in the early nineteenth century and started resolving these opposing impulses. Instead of the two halves forever battling for dominance, they are able to reach a compromise in which both halves win, a new, third state. Put another way, Kant is working with classical logic, where the double negative ‘not-not-A’ is the same as just saying ‘A’. It’s zero sum, it returns to the start. But Hegel disagrees: once I know a thing, confront it with its opposite, and consider the two opposites together, I have more than when I started. I have refined my knowledge of both by refining the boundary between them. I have made progress. I have reached a new stage, I am approaching an absolute truth.
In classical logic, this double negation (“A is not non-A”) would simply reinstate the original thesis. The synthesis does not do this. It has “overcome and preserved” (or sublated) the stages of the thesis and antithesis to emerge as a higher rational unity. (x)
For Hegel, human nature is dynamic. The moral force of reason, which Kant considered static, must be subject to change. We see that society changes, and as society changes, so do its morals. The entire concept of ‘social progress’ depends upon this. By introducing the idea of progress through time, Hegel’s triads add a temporal dimension to otherwise simple pairs of opposites. In this sense, Hegel’s triads are three-dimensional.
In terms of narrative, the third dimension that Hegel’s triads bring to the table becomes apparent when we examine the core mechanism of deeply affecting archetypal character development.
“The endless recurrence of the same underlying pattern suggest psychological, if not biological and physical reasons for the way we tell stories.”
I’ll give two detailed examples of what I mean: the films Wonder Woman and Moana both demonstrate this “overcome and preserved” idea of human nature in incredibly powerful ways.
In Wonder Woman, Diana’s initial idea of human nature is very black and white: men are either “good,” or they have been corrupted by Ares.
If Wonder Woman had been given a simple, two-dimensional Kantian resolution, the movie would have ended when Diana kills General Ludendorff. Simple good triumphs over simple evil: the thesis restored.
But instead, Ludendorff’s death is followed by the most poignant scene of the film, when Diana realizes that ending war and saving humanity is not as straightforward as she’s been taught.
“I am not.”
“But maybe I am.”
Steve Trevor makes her understand that mankind is infinitely corrupted, but at the same time, infinitely worth saving. This knowledge fundamentally changes Diana’s mission; frankly, it changes her whole ethos as a superhero. The thesis (humans are good and deserve to be saved by Diana) and the antithesis (humans are bad and do not deserve to be saved by Diana) are both ‘overcome and preserved’ when she reconciles these two opposite statements and ascends to a new level of knowledge: maybe humans don’t deserve to be saved, but it’s not about what you ‘deserve.’ It’s about what you believe.
In terms of Hegel’s dimension of ‘social progress,’ Diana’s morals evolve from holier-than-thou moral absolutism to radical humanitarian love.
In Moana, Moana must return the Heart of the good, life-giving goddess TeFiti to save her people from the scourge of the evil lava monster TeKa.
A Kantian ending would have Moana simply defeat TeKa and return home victorious. But we see from the beginning that Moana is also torn between two opposing facets of her own nature: her responsibility to stay on her island to lead her people, and her desire to sail beyond the reef and adventure beyond the horizon. Her mission to return the Heart of TeFiti reconciles these opposing impulses, and she embraces her contradictory identity and her people’s heritage as voyagers along the way.
The film equates voyaging with self-knowledge and self-actualization. Without leaving the island, Moana will “never know how far [she’ll] go.” In contrast, her voyaging ancestors already possess this self-knowledge: “we know where we are, we know who we are.” The lyrics trace and retrace the idea of reconciling two opposing facets of self with the goal of synthesis and self-actualization: “I’m a girl who loves my island, I’m a girl who loves the sea, […] I am Moana!”
Moana immediately takes the lessons from her own journey of identity and uses them to resolve the external conflict of the film. When she finally confronts TeKa, she is able to recognize that she need not defeat TeKa at all — she sees that TeKa and TeFiti are one and the same.
Understanding that the life-giving goddess and the ravaging lava monster are two faces of the same god, she names TeKa as TeFiti and returns the Heart to her, making her whole.
Moana returns home victorious, but changed. She inspires ‘social progress’ for her whole community, teaching her people that they must not stay in one place, but must continue to explore and grow as a people. They must reclaim their voyaging heritage in order to find full self-knowledge and freedom, just as Moana has done for both TeFiti and herself.
The difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional, Kantian and Hegelian story arcs can also be framed as the resolution of a character’s flaw and façade. Kant says that humans must use their higher reason to repress their baser instincts. A victory for Kant means a victory of one’s façade (i.e. social responsibilities) over one’s repressed flaw (i.e. inner desires). This is the arc that Moana’s father chooses: he represses his desire to voyage when it conflicts with his responsibilities as chief. He offers Moana the same solution: “In time you’ll learn just as I did, you must find happiness right where you are.”
But Yorke explains that deeply affecting, archetypal stories do just the opposite: a character’s repressed flaw contains the key to victory, and victory can only be achieved when the façade is allowed to crumble and the flaw is fully embraced. When, thanks to the third dimension created by Hegel’s triad, we discover that the flaw and façade are able to coexist after all.
Spending this much time on ‘Kantian this’ and ‘Hegelian that’ may seem overly academic for what this section covers, but I will be pointing back to these ideas throughout the meta. Establishing the philosophy of Hegel will especially pay off when Brecht returns (!) in a future section.
My goal here is to demonstrate that a) ‘Kantian’ and ‘Hegelian’ are terms for qualities that you can already intuitively recognize in stories, and b) those qualities are connected specifically to the content and structure outlined in Yorke’s book and broadly to the philosophy of human nature. Hegel’s triads create a much richer and deeper narrative than does simply defeating the bad guy. Three-dimensional Hegelian stories speak to the inherent contradictions and complexities within the human psyche.
IV. The Becoming of Sherlock Holmes
“But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things.”
— Sherlock Holmes (SIGN)
There is perhaps no character in literature better positioned for a Hegelian reconciliation of his dual nature, nor more overdue for a higher level of self-knowledge, than Sherlock Holmes.
The inner conflict that Sherlock defines for himself is classically Kantian: logic, reason, and remove versus emotion, impulse, and ‘getting involved’. Reason must be ‘cold,’ according to Sherlock — the severed head kept literally in the refrigerator. (‘Where else am I supposed to keep it?’) Sherlock denies himself all base physical urges, from sleeping to eating to sex; everything else is transport. A body totally separated from its mind. A dismembered country squire. A headless nun.
Sherlock’s approach to human nature is definitively old school. It’s fitting in a way, since his knowledge of philosophy, as we know, is ‘nil’.
With this setup, 130 years in the making, it’s no surprise that we’re dying for him to resolve this. It’s his fundamental flaw as a character: his Kantian misunderstanding of his own nature and abilities. He’s beyond ripe for making the decision that his love for John is worth more than his intellect, and from making that decision, discovering that it was never a choice between one or the other at all.
But is that the ending to this story?
No one disputes that Sherlock Holmes tells us about his own cold, rational nature. Where people disagree is whether we should believe him.
But that’s the essential tension of Sherlock Holmes, isn’t it? Will he ever realize that his façade and flaw — -cold reason and warm feeling — -are not mutually exclusive? Will he ever resolve his opposing nature, and find his third dimension? Will he ever progress?
TJLC presupposes that the answer to this question is yes. A Hegelian resolution is what we’ve seen in the show all along, and it’s a part of all stories we love and why they move us. If the writers are working from Yorke’s archetypal story template as I’ve suggested here, the answer is almost certainly yes.
But I’m going to take this one step further.
Yorke tells us that the theme of a story is given by the hypothesis posed by the first act, the refutation of said hypothesis offered by the second, third, and fourth acts, and the answer to the initial question (according to the author) revealed by the fifth act.
I propose that the question of the essential nature of Sherlock Holmes is not only relevant to how BBC Sherlock will end, but is the very argument that the entire show is structured to debate.
I propose that the theme of BBC Sherlock — not just ‘what the show is going to do’, but the very question the show is debating — is:
Should Sherlock Holmes be allowed to defeat his flaw, or should he be pushed to embrace it? .
Should the story of Sherlock Holmes be two-dimensional and Kantian? Or three-dimensional, and Hegelian?
Should the nature of Sherlock Holmes, at his core, over the course of all his adventures, change?
When Sherlock Holmes says that all emotion is abhorrent to him, should we listen?
Framed this way, in terms of how Yorke maps argument to story, we can identify the elements of the show’s argument and judge for ourselves whether this is true.
If the show is an argument as sketched by Yorke, then the first and the fourth acts mark out the bounds of that argument. The point where we stand now is the crisis, or the ‘worst point’. If we presume the show has been structured to explore the question proposed above, it therefore follows that S4 is the answer to what the writers’ idea of a two-dimensional Sherlock Holmes story must look like.
It also follows that the thesis of the character of Sherlock Holmes has been sketched for us in S1. Consider just the titles: A Study in Pink, The Blind Banker, The Great Game. Translation: Sherlock Holmes is gay, falls in love with John Watson, but to fully see their relationship you need to read between the lines of Watson’s ‘doctored’ retellings.
And the inevitable result of the relationship existing only in subtext leads naturally to the antithesis: the idea that there is no romance to be found at all. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes are about being brilliant and solving crimes, period. It’s a detective story, not a story about a detective.
We know that a Kantian resolution must restate the thesis:
Gatiss explained: “Our original intention of the series was to go back to the beginning and see them as younger men and… restore it to its factory settings.”
That is him becoming the Sherlock Holmes of Basil Rathbone and [fellow Holmes actor] Jeremy Brett, the one we’re used to […]
[Moffat] and Gatiss toyed with the idea of flashing the line “The Beginning” across the screen at the end of The Final Problem. (x)
In other words, they’ve used S4 to disguise their deeply Hegelian five-act show as a flat, forgettable series featuring a recyclable, unchanging protagonist. In the context of a future fifth season, it’s a false ending. It’s Diana defeating General Ludendorff and mistaking him for Ares.
It’s a master hand, laying out the plushest, most inviting rug.
Because the argument laid out by Sherlock is the very argument about what sort of story Sherlock is.
Thus we need Yorke twice. First, to understand how the five acts of an archetypal narrative are used to construct an argument, as I’ve covered so far.
But once we’ve identified the episodes that ought to represent the thesis and the antithesis and so on, the question still remains: so what? We’re already out on a limb assuming that there will even be a fifth season — how can we be confident that any of this is relevant?
Is the show really making an intelligible argument within this framework? What does the show say are the two opposites? What is the message?
What is the antithesis of Sherlock Holmes? How exactly has everyone been getting it wrong?
A huge thanks to Adrienne and Darcy for serving as my editors, sounding boards, and cheerleaders for the past several months. Their work is not quite over. Another big thanks to Bruna for contributing the phenomenal banner graphics — there’s more to come from from her as well!
