Genius

Ultimately this is a “Mary Sue,” but the cleverest and most thorough I’ve ever come across. Having a brilliant, appealing female protagonist so convincingly inserted into the Holmes world is immensely satisfying. Some may find it too edgy; I thought it was genius. More, please?

I promise you, you will not regret listening to this podcast. It is excellent in every sense of the word. The sound production is excellent. The voice acting is worthy of any award it gets or had received. Give you time and full attention.

I have a long list of issues with this show, but the on-stage pet killing and on-stage child torture and many instances of homophobia are sufficient to warrant a 1 star review. The entire plot revolves around mental illness, which is presented as entirely murderous and criminal, no nuance. Lots of the kinds of shallow “causes” for mental illness that reveal true disinterest in actual mentally ill people, though there’s plenty of fascination with the character. Mental health fares no better here … completely complicit with child abuse, directly abusing children on stage, again, no nuance. The main character is a woman, and is very shallowly constructed, with flat characterless dialog. As she’s the only woman main character, this show feels overly centered on men. The acting throughout is excellent, so this is entirely a writing problem. The mic technique / dialog editing is excellent in terms of ambience and pacing, but is full of distracting plosives (they really stick out). Otherwise the sound design is truly excellent. Very complete and well balanced. For storytelling narrative, the story travels around in time and jumps from scene to scene without enough consideration for if listeners will remember the many plot fragments in each scene. Listeners could use more reminders of which characters are present in each scene, especially since some actors play multiple roles. There are sex scenes, including incestuous ones where adoption is used as an excuse.

This audio drama is definitely like television for your ears. I am so glad I found it and can’t wait for the second season.