Sherlock “The Reichenbach Fall” is the most perfect 90 minutes of television and the best episode so far that have come from the brilliant minds of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Sunday’s finale sees the return of the truly insane criminal mastermind of Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott). What could be better than a consulting detective and consulting criminal engaging in a constantly escalating series of high-stakes face-offs that begin in the courtroom and end in the “solution” of an inescapable final problem.

Critics on both sides of the pond have called Sherlock “The Reichenbach Fall” both mind-blowing and gut-wrenching. I’m in, how about you?

Earlier this year at the BBC Showcase in Liverpool, when I mentioned to Andrew Scott (Moriarty) that, having just seen “A Scandal in Belgravia” and thought it was brilliant telly, he all-too-quickly summoned up that hint of a Moriarty smile and said, “…you haven’t seen anything yet, referring to Sundays final episode. He was right….you haven’t.

While the evil side of me wants to come up with a Las Vegas-style over/under as to when CBS will pull the plug on their version of a modern day Sherlock, that’s probably not fair without at least giving it a chance. What’s going to make it difficult to like is that, looking at the trailer, the trademark Steven Moffat production techniques, which add greatly to the coolness factor of the BBC/PBS version, along with genius performances from both Cumberbatch and Freeman, are nowhere to be seen in the CBS series. Both Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu appear to be capable of really strong performances. Hopefully, the writing, another Steven Moffat advantage, will be up to the task.

Watch Call the Midwife Preview on PBS. See more from pbs.

Call the Midwife is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth. The story follows twenty-two year old Jenny (Jessica Raine), who in 1957 leaves her comfortable home to become a midwife in London’s East End slums. She expects to find a hospital, and is surprised to find that the clinic is a convent. Working alongside her fellow nurses and the medically-trained nuns of Nonnatus House, Jenny quickly experiences the harsh living conditions of the East End while discovering the warm hearts and the bravery of the mothers where each one a heroine in Jenny’s eyes.

Sundays will definitely be appointment telly this Fall on PBS with Call the Midwife leading in to the second season of the PBS Masterpiece presentation of Upstairs Downstairs.

Fry, as is usually the case, took to Twitter on Monday with the following 140 character gem of a tweet: “Hugh Laurie and I are cooking up a project together. We will be working again soon. Sorry to be mysterious but more news when I can.” Ever since the duo reunited for a 90-minute UKTV GOLD special, Fry and Laurie: Reunited, marking the 30th anniversary of their partnership, there has been speculation of an impending lengthier reunion.The two reminisced through 30 years of friendship, careers and sketches during the special.

Personally, just the thought of them getting back together for any kind of project is good enough for me.

According to the British Sandwich Association, Montagu asked for the meal so that he could eat while continuing to play cards while his friends asked “to have the same as Sandwich“. The first written record of the sandwich was in the Kent town of Sandwich, which is the earldom of the Montagu family…hence, the ’sandwich’ was born.

While America will head right for the hamburger, for me, only one sandwich comes to mind as being worthy of consideration for the title of the best sandwich around to celebrate with this week, the Bacon Butty, the pride of Great Britain. Saveur magazine published this recipe for the Bacon Butty in their Sandwich Issue this past year, but the definitive recipe I found comes from food.com with not only a detailed recipe and instructions, but a scientific formula developed by scientists at Leeds University in West Yorkshire as to why this is the perfect celebration sandwich.

The formula is: N = C + {fb (cm) . fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc . ta, where N=force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon, fb=function of the bacon type, fc=function of the condiment/filling effect, Ts=serving temperature, tc=cooking time, ta=time or duration of application of condiment/filling, cm=cooking method, C=Newtons required to break uncooked bacon. Any questions?

What’s your favorite sandwich and how will you be celebrating this week? Whatever you choose, don’t forget the HP Sauce.

Interestingly, the worldwide success for both series has been achieved in completely different ways with the original Sherlock series being acquired and dubbed into the native language while Doc Martin has found success in countries like Spain where the television network, Antena 3, bought the scripts, recast the series and shot virtually every scene identically from the ITV1 original.

Doc Martin = Doctor Mateo in Spain

Fans of Doc Martin will recognize this scene from the first episode of the series when Doc encounters Louisa on the train on his way to a job interview. Besides Spain, there are also German, Russian and French versions of the curmudgeonly doctor.

Sherlock in Italian, Russian, Spanish, French

Taking a bit of a different route to worldwide success, the Sherlock franchise has been acquired in its original form in over 180 countries around the globe and dubbed to the native language. Taking a scene from the original “A Study in Pink” where Sherlock first meets John Watson, seeing these few examples that were expertly put together by The Telegraph, my initial thought was you’d think that since the world’s greatest detective was so brilliant and Benedict Cumberbatch portrayed him perfectly, there would be no need to dub as not only are we dealing with the ‘universal language of crime fighting’ after all, but surely Sherlock Holmes knows all the languages of the world anyway so why the need to dub? But then I came back to the real world and remembered that ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’ airs tonight on PBS’ Masterpiece series so, all is well. Cheers.

What will I possibly do between now and September?

Not to worry. Besides plenty of PBS Masterpiece Mystery! brilliance between now and then if you are in the States, BBC4 has recently transmitted the latest in a consistently getting longer line of Nordic noir thrillers called The Bridge if you need a bit of DVD viewing options.

The Bridge features a pair of Swedish and Danish detectives who investigate the discovery of a woman’s body exactly halfway across the Oresund bridge, which links their countries. Saga Norén, the socially awkward female Swedish police officer is paired with Martin Rohde, a laid-back Danish cop, on the trail of a killer who believes his actions are defensible for social reasons. For fans of Wallander, The Killing and the Danish political drama, Borgen, this is a great way to ‘bridge’ the gap between now and September.

In a bit of an interesting twist on the re-make front, Kudos, the independent production company behind shows such as Life On Mars, Ashes to Ashes, The Hour and Spooks, is giving The Bridge a UK makeover in the not-too-distant future. While not a huge fan of remakes, I’m thinking that, given Kudos’ track record, this will be one worth checking out.

So far, we have followed the lives of the Crawley family and their staff beginning the day following the sinking of the Titanic, through the flu pandemic of 1918 and the Great War, ending with Christmas at Downton Abbey in 1919. With series three to be set in the Roaring Twenties and will pick up not long after series two ended, executive producer, Rebecca Eaton has hinted that “…a couple will get married, a baby will be born, a well-known character will die, and that there are good scenes between Shirley MacLaine and Maggie Smith.”

Downton Abbey 3 Watching Party – An Upstairs or Downstairs affair?

With September 2012 just around the corner for the UK premiere on ITV1 and January 2013 a bit further down the same road, but still around the corner, for the U.S. premiere on PBS, it’s time to begin planning your Downton Abbey 3 Watching Party. Food is a central theme and whether its breakfast downstairs or dinner upstairs, the important ingredients are planning and preparation.

While I’m guessing you won’t be sitting down with the cook to plan your watching party menu, if you want to emulate ‘upstairs’, be prepared. A minimum of six courses would be provided for each evening meal and sometimes as many as 22 were served for a particularly special occasion. Starting with soup, you’ll need to plan for about 8 courses. Most important, don’t forget that it is imperative that a different alcoholic drink would be served with each course! Then the ladies would take coffee in the drawing room, while the men would enjoy port, brandy and cigars.

While I always felt the downstairs inhabitants had much more fun, I’m thinking I’d like to live downstairs, but eat upstairs. The downstairs is not quite the salmon and sirloin circuit but, rather a more traditional English diet of steak and kidney pie and roast lamb.

If you’re leaning towards a simpler ‘downstairs’ watching party, ITVFood has provided everyone with a few Edwardian-era cooking recipes to get you started. Whichever you choose, don’t forget to let me know the date and time and what I can bring….

According to Digital Spy, the most recent additions to the cast are Ed Speleers (Eragon, Love Bites, Echo Beach) will play a footman named Jimmy, Cara Theobald and Lucille Sharp who will play maids and War Horse star, Matt Milne, who has also been added as a footman who’s also the nephew of the is-she-or-isn’t-she-evil lady’s maid O’Brien.

Speaking of Shirley MacLaine, who plays the mother of Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern), evidently, she charmed the cast during filming the last several months.

Penelope Wilton, who can be seen in the upcoming Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with Dame Judi Dench and Bill Nighy and plays Isobel Crawley, recently told Vulture, “Shirley was wonderful“. She’s so marvellous. She’s in the first two episodes, and we loved her.” Wilton also revealed that MacLaine “fell in love” with her co-star Jim Carter (Carson).

“She thought he was heaven. How could you not?” laughed Wilton.

Not that this will hold you until the UK premiere in September 2012 or the U.S. premiere in January 2013, but we’ll try to satisfy the separation anxiety every chance we get. Cheers.

Thankfully, after all these years, it was nice to hear we share the same tastes in comedy with Terry Gilliam mentioning Family Guy, Carol Cleveland talking Six Feet Under, Michael Palin acknowledging he’s a big fan of Dexter and Twenty Twelve, while Terry Jones, unfortunately, seemed to shock the Pythons by revealing that his telly is in the garage so a bit difficult to identify his current favorites.