Sad Sherlock

One of my favourite programmes is 'That Mitchell and Webb Look'. On Tuesday I switched over and was pleased to have half an hour of a comedy sketch show to watch with Dad in the home on a Tuesday night.
I certainly wasnt prepared for the final sketch of this 'comedy' to be filled with such irony, sadness and poigniancy about an Old Sherlock Holmes!

Watch a Sherlock suffering from Dementia and how he interacts with Dr Watson on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp02ubGuTIU

I couldnt hide myself from the fact that the subject of this sketch was just a bit too close to home for me and maybe many others with relatives with other diseases such as Alzheimers. The last minute especially is rather powerfully heartbreaking as Sherlock has a moment of "clarity" and reveals to Dr Watson: "I know, I do know, I just cant get the fog to clear"

Last week the pair had joked about how Blackadder ended their series with a sad and serious scene (lads climbing over a trench wall into German gunfire) so the ending of this episode/series they had ripped that idea off and fulfilled it in their own show.

Now I know that Mitchell and Webb sketches are often close to the mark and often this kind of comedy would likely be offensive to one group or other but this one for me was not really offensive as such but left me incredibly moved. Maybe they wanted to show that they can actually act (and they really can) but also did they want to go straight from the comedy into serious to make it more hard hitting and thought-provoking? Bringing age, ill health and time to a fictional character. I was expecting a final laugh but it ended very emotionally.

What made me think even more about this was that, although Dad doesnt make sense of much at all, he said to me a few minutes later. "As long as it doesnt end up like on that show" - gulp!

All the comments I have come across on the web have said that people have cried or were sad and that it was slightly unwelcome but yet it was very clever.  We tend to be uneasy about laughing at much of it because of the state of real people, like my dad and others in homes, but maybe this hints to us that laughing and other emotions are actually not as far apart from each other as we think they are.

What do you think?