Dive into your creative stream
After letting it sink, I finally decided to write my little, not-so-professional review about the Sherlock & Co. Milverton adaptation. (Yes, this is one of my non-Moriarty the Patriot focused posts - but a Milverton fan gotta do what a Milverton fan's gotta do. Anyway.) SPOILERS!
Milverton here has a news agency and now he blackmails an activist, Evan Brackwell with the photos that his daughter made who took pictures about herself lying naked on a conservative politician's grave in the cemetery. Evan Brackwell ends at Sherlock and asks him to solve the case.
Milverton's character. He was decently played here, I've seen better Milvertons but he did the job here, too. He was slimy enough, but maybe he should have bathed in his own sliminess more. (Tho, when he joked on his "devilishly handsome face" - that's something Moriarty the Patriot Milverton should have said, and I am hella sure I used this in fanfics before) Still, I am only nitpicking here. Milverton was fine. And I really love that he got connected to the media world again, hacking and storing information, even using deepfakes sometimes to create blackmail material. A modern era Milverton is really terrifying.
The negotiation scene. It happens in a bar and ends with a punch in Milverton's face. (Well, John wanted to use the chair in the canon as well, sooo...) I've seen the negotiation scene better too, but my main problem was that it should have been longer. Sherlock already broke in to Milverton's house and Milverton knows about that, he even mentions it. (Idk why, it must be my cursed shippy brain what is rotten since I first thought of a Milverton/Sherlock when I was a child, but talking about that break-in felt like a drunken lovers' quarrel) I love that Milverton is totally fine with the role of the "slithering serpent", he even ends up calling himself like that. And it's also good that Sherlock didn't miss saying the "Do you feel the creeping, shrinking sensation when you stand before the serpents in the zoo..." speech. A Milverton adaptation without it always feel like they miss out something important.
And now we get to the best part - the other break-in. Usually, the negotiation scene is my favourite, but here, it is the break-in. It was mindblowing and hilarious. Everyone wants to rob Milverton on that night. Sherlock and John is disturbed by Milverton and Irene Adler who comes back from the opera. Milverton seems to be actually into Irene Adler (okay, who wouldn't be into Irene Adler?). Milverton has a drive full of information on Moriarty, Irene wants that. She stabs Milverton in the stomach, takes the drive and calls the ambulance out to him while John and Sherlock listens from the wardrobe. I still don't know how to feel about the stabbing, honestly. I don't like when Irene ends up being a criminal (hi, BBC Sherlock), I would have felt better if she just knocks Milverton out. (By the way, this is not the first time Irene and Milverton are somehow connected, see Kabukichou Sherlock.) But thanks to that stab, I got the most hilarious scene I've ever seen in a Milverton adaptation - John insists that he will go and give Milverton medical help and even makes Sherlock help. Here, John really feels like a doctor, not letting anyone to just bleed out, even if that one is Milverton, someone he hates. (And John calling Milverton Charles to somehow calm him down - that made me wanting to ship Milverton/Watson. If a fanfic happens from it, humanity, please, forgive me.) John and Sherlock leaves, Milverton is on his own, waiting for the ambulance and there comes Moriarty to kill him. (I said that everyone wants to break in on that night, they didn't want to throw a Milverton is dead afterparty?) Milverton calls Moriarty James before he dies. So they are on first person terms. That's the second thing I don't know how to feel about. I don't like Milverton and Moriarty getting connected, Milverton is threatening on his own, he doesn't need Moriarty's back up. (And I am that one Sherlock Holmes fan who was never a fan of Professor Moriarty's character in the canon. At least, the one thing I absolutely LOATHE in a Milverton adaptation didn't happen - Sherlock killing Milverton. That is always so lame.)
With all the nitpicking I have, I really loved this adaptation. I think the Sherlock & Co. one is my favourite from the Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton re-tellings (the less faithful adaptations, like BBC Sherlock, Elementary, Moriarty the Patriot, Kabukichou Sherlock etc). I will definitely listen it again in the future.