Fortunately for all involved, there were 90 minutes of tremendous entertainment lurking in amongst the criss-crossing machinations of the narrative.Īll involved with ‘The Abominable Bride’ clearly had an absolute ball in embracing the Victorian roots of the Sherlock Holmes story. By the time the Victorian reality collapsed into an Inception-esque cavalcade of dreams within dreams, it was a case of simply allowing the ride to rattle onwards. It invited the audience to strap themselves in tightly and try to hold on for as long as possible. ‘The Abominable Bride’ certainly wasn’t a suitable entry point for Sherlock newbies. The layers of his fantasy allowed Holmes to reunite with Moriarty (Andrew Scott) to uncover how the criminal mastermind survived blowing his own brains out. This setting, however, would prove to simply be an extension of Holmes’ mind palace, to which he had retreated after taking a cocktail of drugs on the jet he was left upon at the end of the third season. Holmes was tasked with solving his toughest case to date, with a bride apparently returning as a vengeful ghost after her own suicide to murder a string of men beginning with her husband. The plot, for as much as there was one, catapulted Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and John Watson (Martin Freeman) back into the Victorian setting of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Holmes novels. This was joyous television with a playful sense of humour, whether it made total sense or not. The episode, which passed by in a flurry of fast-paced writing and kinetic direction, didn’t always work, but entertained enough when it did that the flaws soon disappeared into the background. Whatever your thoughts on ‘The Abominable Bride’, it would certainly be wrong to accuse co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss of phoning it in. ![]() ![]() Tom Beasley reviews the bizarre, inventive return of Sherlock to television screens, with The Abominable Bride.
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