TV Madness 2017: Sherlock and Black Sails close out Round Three

Round Three of our TV Madness 2017 Tournament is concluding today, and it’s doing so with two shows in Sherlock and Black Sails who certainly have traveled different paths to make it to this point. In the case of one of them, you’ve got a #1 seed that was able to live up to some of the hype and expectations that we had for it — even if it did have a close scare in the first round against Z Nation. Meanwhile, the other in Black Sails entered as the ultimate underdog, but it’s been rather dominant throughout to this point.

Will Goliah keep rolling, or will the Black Sails Cinderella story reign supreme? We’re excited to see what happens in this showdown. As always, we’re going to start by breaking down the contenders.

Sherlock (#1 seed) – As we’ve noted, the Benedict Cumberbatch – Martin Freeman series was able to survive a first-round scare, and had an easier time eliminating The Fall in its final year of contention for the tournament. We suppose that in some ways, maybe there’s the same urgency here. Sherlock won’t be in the tournament next year since there’s not going to be a new season between now and then. If you want to support the show, now is the time to do so — though you could also make the same case for its rival here.

Black Sails (#7) – As a matter of fact, we know that we can say this is the final year for the Starz pirate drama, given that we’re only one episode away from the series finale. We’ve said this before, but a win here would be a great parting gift to the fans who’ve been there since the beginning. To think, this show entered the tournament as the play-in winner — it didn’t even have a spot in the initial 32 guaranteed! Yet, it managed to upset This Is Us in the first round and then clobber Chicago PD. It’s steamrolled everything in its path so far, so we’ll see if it can do the same thing here.

Now, we turn this over to you! As a quick note, voting is only going to last for two days, so be sure to show your support between now and March 26 — that’s when the winner here will battle either Call the Midwife or Longmire.