The appetizer wasn't night owl.

Last week's warm-up to Sunday night's new Sherlock was a lovely Vienna symphony performance. All class and culture. This week?

Well, who has more class and old world culture than the high council of vampires and their intrigues?

And Lara Pulver, the woman of BBC's latest incarnation of Holmes.

So to keep myself away from social media spoilers, off to the theaters I went to see Underworld: Blood Wars with Lara Pulver as the vampire lady Semira (with her boy-toy Bradley James, recognizable to many as Merlin's Arthur). Not a movie for everyone, perhaps, but if you can conceive of finding any pleasure at all in watching vampires and werewolves shoot each other with machine guns . . . well . . .

("I'm not an adult. I'm a high-functioning thirteen-year-old." The motto of the firm.)

But it reminded me of how great Lara Pulver was as Irene Adler, who, unlike Mycroft and Moriarty, doesn't seem to be appearing in every episode of Sherlock.  And yet, hope springs eternal.

Seeing her as a vampire in the latest Underworld potboiler, was good for one fantasy daydream where Watson's mysterious late night text messages in "The Six Thatchers" were sent from a character not in the episode for whom it "had been too long." Said exchange ending with:

"Night owl?"

"Vampire."

Irene Adler and John Watson? Hmmm . . . given the Mary Morstan that John went for, and Anthea, somehow Irene doesn't seem all that out of Watson's taste range.

The wild and wonderful tweets that I was seeing before the movie started forebode things unexpected and grand, but somehow I doubt we'll get Irene returning prophesied by a vampire movie that just happened to come out the same weekend.

Still . . . Irene . . . I miss her.