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It’s a traditional struggle that feels especially at home in the Victorian age, perhaps. Sensibilities integral to Conan Doyle’s stories are made central here too, with the theme of the rational against the supernatural harking back most clearly to The Hound of the Baskervilles. Five years in, Sherlock’s arch self-awareness shows no sign of tiring, now acknowledging even its own esteemed place in the Holmes mythos. The Basil Rathbone films get a look-in (“Elementary, my dear Watson”), and a direct quotation of The Adventure of the Creeping Man (“Come at once if convenient – if inconvenient, come all the same”) is simultaneously a humorous back-reference to its contemporary paraphrasing in A Study in Pink (2010), the first episode of this TV incarnation. There are not simply knowing winks to Conan Doyle’s stories ( The Five Orange Pips, for instance) and The Strand Magazine, but reverent looks to the wider worlds of the character in other forms. Similarly frequent throughout are the references to the Holmes ‘canon’, in the broadest sense of the word. Bold stylistic touches like this are pushed, especially early on, to make clear this is the same programme we know and love, its grandiose sense of camp firmly intact. Introduced with a tongue-in-cheek ‘previously’ flashback, the 19 th-century setting is barely established before we’re seeing 221B’s living room standing incongruously in the street as events are recounted to Holmes and Watson.

Wisely, the ‘period piece’ nature of the episode and the series’ modern idiosyncrasies are collided early on, with trademark audacity. A period-juggling, genre-straddling romp, it was a highly enjoyable diversion from the series proper, and an immensely satisfying piece of seasonal TV. For me, it was the best the show’s been since the last episode, which I also enjoyed.

We can rest assured, then, that The Abominable Bride is a success.

Response has varied from it being championed as the best yet to final evidence that Sherlock has finally vanished up its own back end in a confused bubble of sexism. No mean feat in this day and age (for further reference, see all other TV from the last week). It was the most-watched TV programme of the festive season, with 8.4 million on overnight figures alone.

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