The Blind Banker
| "The Blind Banker" | |
|---|---|
| Sherlock episode | |
Title card of the episode
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| Episode no. |
Series 1 Episode 2 |
| Directed by | Euros Lyn |
| Written by | Stephen Thompson |
| Featured music |
David Arnold Michael Price |
| Original air date | 1 August 2010 |
| Running time | 88 minutes |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
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"The Blind Banker" is the second episode of the television series Sherlock, first broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 1 August 2010. It was written by Stephen Thompson and directed by Euros Lyn.
Sherlock is a loose adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, taking place in the modern day. "The Blind Banker" follows Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) and John Watson (Martin Freeman) as they investigate a series of ciphers representing numbers in an ancient Chinese numeral system which have been left by a Chinese smuggling ring who seem intent on killing to retrieve an item that one of them stole.
"The Blind Banker" attracted 8.07 million viewers on BBC One and BBC HD. Critical reception was positive, though some reviewers felt it was inferior to the first episode.
At the National Antiquities Museum, Chinese pottery expert Soo Lin Yao (Gemma Chan) sees something frightening, and disappears. Meanwhile, Sherlock takes John to a high-powered international finance house. There, Sebastian Wilkes (Bertie Carvel), an old university acquaintance of Sherlock's, asks for help. A break-in occurred in which an apparently meaningless pair of symbols were spray-painted onto a portrait of a banker. Sherlock realises that was a message meant for one man - Edward Van Coon of the Hong Kong desk - who has not come to work. Sherlock breaks into Van Coon's locked flat and finds him dead. The police, under Detective Inspector Dimmock (Paul Chequer), regard it as a suicide, though Sherlock sees it as murder. Soon, journalist Brian Lukis (Howard Coggins) is also killed inside his locked flat. Sherlock and John investigate, and in a library where Lukis had been they find the same mysterious symbols painted on a shelf.
John, seeking financial security, obtains a job as locum at a local surgery run by Sarah Sawyer (Zoe Telford). Later, Sherlock and John discover a link between the two men; both had just returned from China, and both went to an oriental curio shop, "The Lucky Cat". There, Holmes learns that the symbols are ancient Chinese Hangzhou numerals. Sherlock enters Soo Lin's empty flat and finds an intruder; a brief fight ensues, but the attacker flees. At the museum they then discover the same symbols on a statue. Then, with the help of graffiti artist "Raz" (Jack Bence), Sherlock and John find more symbols graffitied on a wall, and struggle to decode the message. Back at the museum, Holmes surprises Soo Lin in hiding, who explains the code is linked to the criminal ring "Black Lotus Tong", of which she was once a member. Unfortunately, before she can fully decode the message, she is killed by her brother, who is also a member of the criminal gang. Sherlock realises Van Coon and Lukis were members of the Tong, involved in smuggling valuable antiquities to sell in London, and they were killed because one of them stole something.
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