A Study In Pink

"A woman in pink lies dead in a derelict house. She is the fourth in a series of seemingly impossible suicides."

"A Study In Pink" is the first episode of the first season of Sherlock, originally broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on July 25, 2010. It was written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and directed by Paul McGuigan. It is inspired by the Arthur Conan Doyle novel A Study In Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes book.

Summary
John Watson, an army doctor injured in Afghanistan, meets Sherlock Holmes, who is looking for a flatmate to share a flat at 221B Baker Street, owned by landlady Mrs. Hudson. The police, led by Detective Inspector Lestrade, have been baffled by series of deaths, described as "serial suicides". Holmes looks at the latest crime scene: a woman named Jennifer Wilson, who was dressed in pink, lies dead. She managed to claw the word "Rache" into the floor and Sherlock reckons the victim died before completing the name "Rachel", the name of her deceased daughter. Holmes deduces she is from out of town, and therefore had a suitcase. The police have not found a suitcase with the body, but Holmes discovers it abandoned nearby. Meanwhile, Watson, after a phone call, is abducted and meets a man who claims to be Holmes's "arch-enemy". The man offers him money to spy on Holmes, but Watson refuses. He also tells Watson that, far from suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as his therapist believes, he actually misses the war.

When Watson returns to Baker Street, Holmes asks him to send a text message to Wilson's still-missing phone, hoping the murderer will make a move. While waiting at a local restaurant, Holmes notices a taxi and manages to outpace it on foot. However, the passenger is innocent. Holmes presumes "Rachel" was Wilson's e-mail password and the victim planted her phone on the killer so he could be traced by GPS. Watson simultaneously finds the signal is coming from 221B Baker Street; Mrs. Hudson tells Holmes a taxi is waiting for him. Outside, the driver confesses to the killings, but proclaims he merely speaks to his victims and they kill themselves. He challenges Holmes to solve his puzzle, and later the driver pulls out two bottles, each containing an identical pill. He says one of the pills is harmless, the other poison; he invites his victims to choose one, promising he will swallow the other — and he threatens to shoot them if they refuse.

Sherlock soon deduces the driver is an estranged father who was told three years earlier he was dying. The driver admits that he has a "sponsor" for his work, paying money for each murder for the driver's children. Holmes, having already noticed that the 'gun' is actually a novelty cigarette lighter, attempts to leave. However, the driver challenges him again to choose a pill and see if he can solve the puzzle. Meanwhile, Watson has traced the GPS signal from the phone and followed the two men. He shoots the driver through a window in the adjacent building. Holmes questions the dying driver about his sponsor, who eventually reveals the name "Moriarty". The police arrive and Holmes deduces the shooter is Watson, but hides this from the police. Holmes and Watson leave the scene and run into the man who had abducted Watson earlier. He turns out to be Sherlock's elder brother, Mycroft; Watson now understands that Mycroft tried to bribe him out of genuine concern for Sherlock. Mycroft instructs his secretary to increase their surveillance status.

Allusions
The episode is loosely based on A Study in Scarlet and contains several allusions to this book.


 * In A Study In Scarlet, Sherlock uses a lost ring to lure the killer. In "A Study In Pink", Sherlock uses a mobile phone to directly contact the killer.
 * Both A Study In Scarlet and "A Study In Pink" use the presence of the clue 'Rache', with the word being scratched on the ground by a victim in their dying moments. In A Study In Scarlet, Sherlock dismisses the idea that she was trying to write the name 'Rachel', and instead wrote the German word for 'revenge'. However, in "A Study In Pink" this is reversed, with Rachel being the name of the victim's deceased daughter.
 * In A Study In Scarlet, the murderer is dying from an aortic aneurysm, whereas the cabbie in "A Study In Pink" is dying from a brain aneurysm.

Present are further allusions to other works of Arthur Conan Doyle.


 * The close-reading that Sherlock applies to John's mobile phone is drawn from a nearly identical analysis of a pocket watch in The Sign of the Four.
 * The "three-patch problem", in reference to nicotine patches used by Sherlock, is similar to the term "three-pipe problem" used in The Red-Headed League.
 * Sherlock's shout of "The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on!" is a reference to the line "The game is afoot" from The Adventures of the Abbey Grange.
 * The second murder victim's name is James Phillimore, a reference to a case that Holmes failed to solve in The Problem of Thor Bridge.
 * The text messages that Sherlock sends John are nearly word-for-word from a telegram Holmes sends Watson in The Adventure of the Creeping Man.

Watson's reference to having been shot in the shoulder but having a psychosomatic limp in his leg is an allusion to a continuity error in the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. In A Study In Scarlet, Watson's injury is said to be in his shoulder. However, in later stories this is changed to his leg.