Outrage and amusement at Sherlock's nude dominatrix

BARELY had the first working day of the new year begun before the Daily Mail declared its first BBC controversy of 2012: a scene from Sherlock it considers too raunchy to have been broadcast before the watershed.

Happily, the scene is not too raunchy to be reproduced on the Mail's website, where screengrabs appear under the catchy headline: "Sherlock and the case of nudity before 9pm: BBC under fire for raunchy pre-watershed scenes in adaptation of Conan Doyle classic".

The episode in question is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story A Scandal in Bohemia and was broadcast at 8.10pm on New Year's Day. It features Lara Pulver, playing dominatrix Irene Adler, wearing nothing but a pair of stilettos, and striking Sherlock Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, with a riding whip.   

Series co-creator Steven Moffat said Pulver had been introduced to combat persistent whisperings that there are homosexual overtones in the relationship between Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson, played by Martin Freeman.

But it's the bisexual antics of Pulver's dominatrix that have left the Mail hot under the collar (her character is also seen to have strapped a woman to a bed). The paper claims "families" were "shocked", and quoted one Twitter user who said: "Dominatrix?! Watershed anyone? My ten-year-old was watching that."

By this morning, however, Twitter users were feeling a little more liberated, with the vast majority amused that the Mail had reprinted the raunchy pictures while professing outrage. "Mail serving up equal parts outrage and titillation," wrote @MikeHWhiteside.

A BBC spokesman told Broadcast: "We're delighted with the critical and audience response to the first episode which has been extremely positive. From an average audience of 8.8m, there have been just 59 complaints." ·