By
Steven Moffat
and
Mark Gatiss
“Rest
assured there are no ghosts in this world. Save those we make for ourselves”
After a long wait and a
lot of speculation on what the New Year’s Day special would be about for the
critically acclaimed Sherlock series by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss has
finally been shown on our TV Screens. We
now know the answers to all our speculations and was it worth the long wait
since 2014 when the show was last on?
Most fans would say yes and for me the lure was seeing the main cast set
in Victorian times and yes this special was pretty good if not a tad confusing
at times.
What I mean by confusing
at times if you are not a diehard fan who have watched all three series and
have been devoted to the show since it’s been on, well, you may be a bit lost
watching this special especially towards the end. While watching The Abominable Bride my thought towards the end and when modern day
started to seep into the narrative that the casual fan or casual viewer tuning
in to watch a Sherlock Holmes adventure might be lost and yes they most likely
were as The Abominable Bride pretty
cleverly fit into the regular continuity of the ongoing series and ties in with
the Series three’s finale cliffhanger.
That was pretty clever how they worked all that in but for me I would
have preferred if the story was a standalone story and stayed firmly in the
Victorian times.
Don’t get me wrong I
really enjoyed The Abominable Bride
as it was with the main part of the story being in Sherlock’s mind palace but I
would have really liked if this story was just a standalone story set in the
1880’s. It would have been pretty cool
if Moffat and Gatiss went in that direction as they could have paid homage to
past Holmes series like the Jeremy Brett era Holmes show which did get some
nods in The Abominable Bride. It would have been a pretty cool story just
being set in Victorian Times and they could have done it again and again as a
series of specials throughout the time they are doing Sherlock as a way to keep
the fans happy. I for one would love
that and it would be a different type of pace from what they have given us
before. Oh well an opportunity lost but
I still enjoyed what we got on January First.
With that said I did enjoy
The Abominable Bride and how Moffat
and Gatiss were able to spin modern day Sherlock into this story. Apparently this entire story took place in Sherlock’s
drug induced mind. We get an idea of
what Sherlock does in his mind palace and what he really thinks about his
brother. In the books Mycroft is
chubbier than he is portrayed by Mark Gatiss but wow they really went overboard
on that makeup. In fact, I still don’t
know why that was in story with them having a bet on when he would eat himself
to death but considering that it was a drug induced dream it makes sense on the
second viewing. I did like the way they
kept going back and forth from the present and then back to Sherlock’s dream
even though at points it got hard to decipher when he was back in the present.
What was really the basis
of the story was the Moriarty factor.
Yes he appeared in the dream but in fact Moriarty was the ghost for Sherlock
to conquer. Take the quote at the top of
this review. That is in reference to
Sherlock struggling with the fact that Moriarty is his chief rival who is
dead. Sherlock is struggling with the
fact that he might be alive and the whole case of Emilia Ricoletti faking her
death to kill her husband was really Sherlock trying to work out how Moriarty
was alive. In fact, he does come up with
the solution when he confronts all the women who helped Emilia Ricoletti with
her plan and kept it going after she eventually killed herself. That same deduction is what he needed and
alluded to at the end when he told Watson that Moriarty was dead. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone
else is taking up the Moriarty mantle whenever the series returns.
The
Abominable Bride was a
pretty good special and it will definitely get the fans speculating about what
will happen next in Series. I really
loved the whole Victorian setting and I was really engrossed in the overall
story and wasn’t put off with the “I’m cleverer than you” moments that Gatiss
and Moffat throw into the story and those moments really did work and made the
story a lot more interesting. It was
also pretty good having the women rights movement incorporated into this story
as it is an important part of our history and you can see how things have
changed especially with the way Watson was towards the females in the story and
it made you think how far we have come.
The
Abominable Bride was a
fun story to watch filled with a lot of things to make you think about Sherlock
Series 4 but I just wished it was a standalone story in Victorian Times but who
knows maybe next time. Hopefully we
won’t have to wait as long as we had to for this New Year’s Day Special.
Grade A
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