The mystery behind the upcoming and highly-anticipated BBC Sherlock Christmas special, “The Abominable Bride,” is slowly starting to peel back with the release of a second trailer, new photos and more details on what to expect.
Furthermore, in a quest to extract more information, Radio Times sat down with the co-writer of the show, Steven Moffat, to discuss the new Victorian-era Sherlock adventure.
“It’s a proper scary mystery. I think it’s quite a good mystery with quite a good solution, but there’s also the ongoing tension between the version of the characters we developed to accommodate the modern setting now sitting in Victorian times.”
Moffat, however, was tight-lipped on a few questions, including when it came to which Sherlock characters were sent back to Victorian times, and which didn’t make the cut.
According to Steven, the storyline of the new Sherlock is brand new; although, as Moffat points out, there are references throughout to other Sherlock Holmes stories, much like past episodes of Sherlock .
“It’s a new story but if you know the original stories, you’ll see that it’s fashioned out of quite a few others. As ever with us we’ve chosen several and there are loads of references. One of them you have to be able to speak Chinese to get.”
CNET dives into the back story of “The Abominable Bride” a little bit further. The idea of “The Abominable Bride” comes from an Arthur Conan Doyle short story called, “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual,” from 1893. In that story, Dr. Watson makes reference to a case he and Sherlock Holmes worked on about a club-footed man and his abominable bride.
The question CNET poses: who will be the abominable bride? In the newest trailer for the Sherlock special, a short bit shows a woman in a mini dress shooting off guns, and the character is not one seen in other Sherlock episodes.
When it comes to the Victorian-based Sherlock special, it appears Sherlock Holmes himself (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) was quite skeptical about the proposal to go back in time, according to the Irish Examiner .
“I thought it was madness. I thought (the writers) had finally lost the plot, jumped the shark, all the other cliches of television gone mad with itself. Then they expanded the idea and pitched it to me properly and I think it’s fantastic. Absolutely brilliant.”
Although Sherlock himself was won over, Benedict Cumberbatch wonders how the special will go down with the legions of fans who cannot wait for “The Abominable Bride” to hit not only their TV screens, but also local movie theaters.
“I don’t really know how the fans are going to react to it. I think that’s one of the joys of doing it like this… We haven’t disappointed fans in the past it seems so hopefully this won’t.”
Cumberbatch also revealed how much fun it was to go into the past and don the famous deerstalker hat and smoking pipe that Sherlock Holmes is famed for. In fact, he found it almost easier to play the character of Sherlock in Victorian times than in modern times. Sherlock was now in his element, as he was written to be, by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Cumberbatch also discussed how enjoyable it was to be on set with his long-time partner in solving crime Martin Freeman, who plays Dr. Watson and whose comedic chops made the experience a lot of fun.
It won’t be too much longer before everything will be revealed when Sherlock hits television screens on January 1, 2016. A theatrical release in a number of countries is soon to follow. The wait for new Sherlock is almost over.
[Feature image from BBC One]
