Sherlock Christmas special watched by 8.4 million viewers

As always, an unsolvable crime is brought to the attention of Sherlock and Watson.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, analysts seem to believe that The Abominable Bride and the impending, heavily-hyped release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in China on January 9 will court vastly different demographics unique to the Chinese film market. There were also some scene-stealing moments for Una Stubbs as landlady Mrs Hudson, slyly digging at Watson’s habit for portraying her as a near mute housemaid in his accounts of Holmes cases. But it was set in Victorian London, the 19th-century setting of the original detective series written by Arthur Conan Doyle. 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. Naturally, the Lady is concerned. “I’m very interested in both of those, but I’d rather not be sewing people up on a battlefield – hence becoming an actor”. But he is immediately called back to London when it is discovered that his nemesis Moriarty is still alive.

And miss him we did.

NEXT TIME ON SHERLOCK: Season 4 is slated to air sometime in 2017. Holmes was more polished, Watson more uptight – and the production values as sky high as ever. It is. He dies – a stab wound to the chest – and Sherlock can’t do anything to stop it.

“I don’t think so, he’s still got a lot of fight in him, he hasn’t become patronisingly nice and charming”. Moffat told the Tribune News Service, “It was just Mark and I sitting on the train, really (talking) about how much we like the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce updated versions of Sherlock Holmes back in the day”. But beyond that small clue, the showrunners revealed little else about the plot. Sherlock combined period drama, feminism and a fiendish whodunit into a feature-length comeback that got 2016 off to a flying start – often quite literally, as our hero soared in aeroplanes and plummeted down waterfalls.

Moriarty IS Dead… we think.

. Sherlock and John of our time are replaced by the sharp and wittier Holmes and Watson of 1985, right after “The Reichenbach Fall”.

But of course, Mary did not need saving. “We’ll be hungry later.’ Obviously, she’s going to rebel!” There’s hardly any female characters, they don’t speak and they’re not interesting. There was Watson’s doomed attempts, as they sat waiting for the spectral bride to appear, to get Sherlock to talk about his feelings.

The bride had faked her own death, before later actually killing herself, but an army of women were rising up – the Suffragettes – standing up against men who thought they were superior.