The fan servicing in this series has become juvenile and insulting, and you can see Freeman and Cumberbatch are starting to lose their patience. It’s an ill-conceived idea with a convoluted narrative, a lame excuse to bring back old faces, and rubbish gender politics that sound like something a teenager would have written in their fan fiction on Tumblr. ‘The Abominable Bride’ might be entertaining, but it never rises above being akin to expensive fan fiction, an unusual "what if". As the series continues, ‘Sherlock’ is threatening to become something far too esoteric for its own good. The problem is, the link becomes so convoluted that something already confusing becomes even more so, diving us deeper into Sherlock’s "mind palace". As it turns out, writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss do find a way to link the special to the main narrative, using the period story and setting to inform Sherlock’s interpretation and response to Moriarty’s apparent return in the modern world. Unfortunately, as the special moves along, it quickly begins to unwind. It certainly doesn’t hold up against the better early episodes, but it is great to see Freeman, Cumberbatch and the rest of the cast romping around in the period setting - and with so many modern updates of the stories around these days, it’s wonderful to see the world and characters as Conan Doyle intended. What would be the point of leaving the modern setting behind for one episode other than amusement, especially when episodes of the series are so few and far between? It’s a lovely surprise then that, initially, the special is actually a lot of fun, returning a series that had gotten far too serious back to the blackly comic wit that had won us over to begin with. I must admit, I initially expected ‘The Abominable Bride’ would be a waste of time. Set firmly in the world Conan Doyle had originally crafted, the special quickly covers the first meeting between Dr John Watson (Martin Freeman) and Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) before we’re thrown into an unusual case, where an undead bride has commenced a murderous rampage across London. The series last left us in 2014 with a baffling cliffhanger, but now the acclaimed modern retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved character has finally returned.
The wait between seasons of ‘Sherlock’ seems to get longer and longer, making its enormous (and recently, confusing) season finales all the more cruel.
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