Sherlock lives! Now all I have to do is hang on until Sunday…

Most of what passes for entertainment on the telly these days is, by and large, utter bollocks. I can’t stand game shows, despise soaps with a passion and am ambivalent about the majority of crime dramas, working on the theory that, like boobs, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

I count among this sweeping generalisation much of ITV’s output, as well as Five’s, with a goodly chunk of Channel 4 thrown in for good measure. As you can imagine, it doesn’t leave much of the average TV schedules left to pick over, but what remains is usually selected Channel 4 documentaries, a few Sky Atlantic/Living series and a hefty dollop of delights from the BBC.

The British Broadcasting Corporation’s reputation may have taken a battering recently, but Aunty Beeb can still kick just about every other broadcaster’s arse into the middle of next week when it comes to making quality programming. Think of just about every decent homegrown show you’ve seen in the past zillion years and, chances are, the majority will have come from the BBC.

I have my favourites (stick a pin in the period drama of your choice, The Office, Messiah, The Fall, the list is long but distinguished). Arguably the daddy of them all though, has been Sherlock – Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ wet dream of a show, which has not only given them the chance to bring Conan Doyle’s smart-arse consulting detective to life and made an overnight star out of the chisel-cheekboned Benedict Cumberbatch, but also has inspired us, the viewing public to watch and adore it in our millions.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been more excited about a TV programme than I was about the first episode of series three. I even made a point of getting in some high-end nibblies (foie gras and Sauterne, no less) to accompany it. Nerves were jangling, naturally – would Moffat and Gatiss be able to pull off the remarkable feat of satisfying our curiosity about Sherlock’s apparently fatal fall, reintroduce him to the world AND serve up a juicy mystery for him to solve? The answer was, of course, a massive yes.

The best thing about tour de force of an opener The Empty Hearse was the apparent ease with which everything slotted into place. Of course Sherlock would burst back into a staggered John’s life just as he was about to pop the question. Of course faceless criminals would abduct John, only for Holmes to pull his friend from a burning pyre, and, of course, they would go on to foil a murky plot to blow up Parliament on Bonfire Night. Easy peasy. In between, the in-jokes came thick and fast, from dream sequences exploring how Sherlock ‘did it’ (Derren Brown, you naughty boy) and Cumberbatch’s real-life parents playing his mum and dad, to the hilarious moment we met Molly’s new boyfriend, Tom… Who could ask for more?

If Sherlock teaches us anything, it’s that good things come to those who wait, and Christ knows we’ve waited long enough. In this era of the boxed set and Netflix, where we can gorge on episode after episode of TV shows until our eyeballs plop out of our heads, being forced to diet and exercise a little self control is no bad thing. As with so many things, anticipation is everything, and while Gatiss and Moffat may have been experiencing the mother of all brown trouser moments as series three got underway, I can assure them they weren’t alone.

The new version of Sherlock has been clutched so closely to the world’s bosom (by that of course, I mean mine) that – for me at least – I was desperate not to be disappointed. We had waited so long and so patiently, for it not to live up to expectations was too painful a notion to even consider. It sounds so throwaway to say ‘luckily’, because it means far more than that, but luckily, The Empty Hearse blew the top of my head off.

After two long, Holmes and Watson-free years, hanging on until Sunday for the next instalment shouldn’t be too hard, but I bet you a million pounds it will feel as though time has slowed down deliberately, just to test my patience. Thankfully I know even that short wait will be well worth it.