The Abominable Bride

I did not fully get it the first time but when I watched it again, it all started making some sense to me. It may be difficult for those who are not devoted fans of this series to fully grasp the craziness of this episode, but once you open your eyes to the genius of the writers' intent on what they were trying to achieve here, I could not keep my eyes off the show and found myself watching it over and over again. If the writers of series simply made this an one-off episode to truly stick to the original storyline, then there would be numerous critical remarks about how the writers settled for the comfort of predictability and made the whole plot so ordinary and boring. Before shooting at the TV screen and calling it 'stupid', one may want to watch it one more time and there will be that "a-ha" moment!

In a Sherlock Holmes mind trip he is taken back to the 1890s. In a setting very much like that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have envisaged, Holmes is a private detective, operating out of 221B Baker Street. Assisting him is Dr Watson. They are presented with a very baffling case. A woman, Emelia Ricoletti, publicly shoots and kills herself, only to appear a few hours later and kill her husband. Within the next few months other murders are committed by woman appearing to be Mrs Ricoletti. Even the police are thinking that paranormal activity is afoot. Then Sir Eustace Carmichael is threatened by such an apparition and his wife calls in Holmes and Watson.

The idea of filming a Sherlock Holmes episode in the original time and setting appealed to me. It gave us a taste of what the series would have been like if it hadn't been contemporised. However, at the back my mind was the nagging suspicion that the writers had run out of ideas and that going back to the 1890s was a gimmick, and the series' jumping the shark moment.

Ultimately it isn't as straightforward as an entire Sherlock episode set in the 1890s, so difficult to judge whether it was meant to be a gimmick or not. It ends up much more complex than that, and, to an extent, unnecessarily so. We have many jumps between the 1890s and the 2010s and it seems like style over substance.

However, it is very entertaining. The 1890s murder story is very intriguing and is woven into the overall plot well. The modern day side is reasonably well done, though the Moriarty scenes seemed a bit self-indulgent and overblown.

Overall, not brilliant but a pretty good episode nevertheless.

There might have slipped through some spoilers.

This episode takes place in Victorian London, which was in the first place something weird, because we are used that this series takes place in present day. In Victorian Londen we see how Watson and Sherlock would have met if the whole series took place in Victorian London. Then we get a speed forward and we get to know the case of this episode. There was this bride that suddenly started to kill people and thereafter kills herself, but the weird part has yet to come. The bride kills her own husband after she died... Now Sherlock and Watson are put on to this case, to explain the mystery.

The directing and cinematography of this episode was nice, as always with this series. I loved every shot, . The editing was cool to, you had some nice transitions between scenes. Like when Watson and Sherlock are waiting for the 'gohst' to appear, there is this spinning the camera movement, and while the camera is spinning the time goes by. And by this you can see the camera spinning as a clock, which was a fun thing, in my opinion. The make-up was good too, the blown out brains etcetera. The set design was amazing, I just can't understand how they could have changed the city like that, the BBC has done this earlier with 'Peaky Blinders' a less good show, again in my opinion. I loved that they took the apartment where they filmed the original show in, and made it look like it was from the 19the century. The costumes as well were cool. They gave Sherlock his stereotypical hat back, where they made fun of in the rest of the show. The music was nice as always. They took the original theme song, but did a thing different, which I can't really explain.

The acting of this special was very good as always. Sherlock was played by Bennedict Cumberbatch. I think that he is the best person that they could have chosen to play Sherlock. He was a bit stiff in the beginning of the episode (a bit more about this later on), but overall he was good. Martin Freeman played Doctor John Watson. He was good as well, he had some great chemistry with Sherlock, this can also be seen in the rest of the series. Mark Gatis, the writer of the show, and also the actor of Mycroft Holmes, came back as well. I didn't really like what they did with his character. They made him fat. Really, really fat. It was meant as a joke, but for me it wasn't really funny. In the present day he was back as his normal self, and there he acted well. The 'fat-suit' they put him in looked also fake. The actress who played the bride was scary, and acted good.

The script was very nicely written. As I have said earlier, I taught that everything was a bit stubborn, and stiff in the beginning, maybe this was like this, because I haven't seen a Sherlock episode in a while, huh, BBC?, but after a couple of minutes it loosened up and everything went back to normal. What I very much liked is the way why everything is now in Victorian London. It fitted the theme well. The only thing that botterd me is that they left us with a cliffhanger... AGAIN. The jokes they put in there were almost always funny, but the fat Mark Gatis, just didn't feel right for me. The references put in there were fun to spot, and I am not going to spoil them, so you can go find them yourself :).

Anyway, this was a fun and scary episode. Finally we got back a Sherlock episode, and I am glad that that happened.

Sherlock and Watson land in the late Nineteenth Century to solve the case of Emelia Ricoletti, a bride that killed herself, and then later manages to shoot her husband and bring about the death of Lord Carmichael. The duo must uncover how this devious crime was carried out.

I must admit I have been hugely looking forward to this, possibly because I was keen to see how the altered setting would work. Series 3 had been somewhat of a disappointment, a little too self satisfied I suppose, so I'm glad they did something different to refresh it, it was certainly different.

A few minor quibbles, a little contrived at times, and as is the nature of the show it did seem a little wrapped up in its own smuggness at times, but I was utterly enveloped in the story, it had me wrapped from start to finish. Beautiful cinematography, great direction, awesome production values. It managed to feel fresh and exhilarating once again.

Cumberbatch was definitely on fine form, I loved the altered appearance, suited him, I noticed a few Jeremy Brettisms, not sure if anyone else did, maybe the hair and some of the body language. The scenes between Holmes and Moriarty once again were simply amazing, Andrew Scott is just unbelievable, he is such a charismatic performer.

Crazy, fun, Gothic, energetic, waited a long time, and it was worth the wait. 9/10

Almost the perfect episode until the last 20 minutes. They didn't have to make it so complicated. The story was great , the setting was perfect and the acting as always was impeccable. Not going to go on about the story but just lightly summarize the drawbacks and the SHERLOCK moments. The episode as it stands I feel didn't need to be connected to where we left in season 3. The story and the setting was good enough for it to be stand alone episode. Though I did enjoy the subtle scene references from the main Sherlock. More importantly the episode for god sake just needed have a good solid ending. I am sure most of the viewers would complain about how the makers tried too hard to pull off a "SHERLOCK" ending. It just needed to be enough to quench the beaming desire of the fans for another year as they wait to see their favorite detective on his adventures.

What I did enjoy about the episode is as is the case with every sherlock episode is the dialogs. They take a moment to seep in and when they do: wow. The references to the main series are also enjoyable. For the first 1hr the episode hits the high standards it has set since its inception, but where it does falter is in the last 30 minutes where just needs to wrap it up in good solid way.

No matter for that, Sherlock fans will definitely enjoy it. To sum up, the episode as Moriarty would say if he was to represent the whole series: MISS ME