The Abominable Bride

"The Abominable Bride"
Sherlock episode
Directed by Douglas Mackinnon
Written by
Produced by Sue Vertue
Featured music
Cinematography by Suzie Lavelle
Editing by Andrew McClelland
Original air date 1 January 2016 (2016-01-01)
Running time 89 minutes
Guest actors

"The Abominable Bride" is a special episode of the British television programme Sherlock. The episode was broadcast on BBC One and BBC One HD on 1 January 2016. It depicts the characters of the show in an alternative timeline; in the Victorian London setting of the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. The title is based on the quote ("Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife") from "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", which refers to a case mentioned by Holmes.[1]

Plot

The film starts with a swift reiterative flashback to all of the previous episodes. Then, the story begins in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, where Dr John Watson narrates his service in Afghanistan resulting in his being seriously wounded. After his medical discharge from the Army, he goes to London, where he is met by Stamford, his fellow-student at Bart's, who takes him to meet Sherlock Holmes, who is beating corpses with a cane to establish the principle of bruising after death. Holmes invites Watson to share his new flat in Baker Street, which Watson accepts. (A streamline of the opening scene from the series premiere.)

In 1895, just before Christmas, Watson and Holmes ride on a carriage through London, while The Strand promotes Watson's new story, 'The Blue Carbuncle'. After arriving at Baker Street, Mrs Hudson meets them outside. She complains to Watson that she not be treated as a plot device in his stories before they discover that Watson's wife Mary is posing as a client to see her husband. Inspector Lestrade arrives and presents Holmes and Watson with a puzzling case: Emelia Ricoletti, a consumptive bride gone mad, had fired on by-passers in the street from a balcony, before fatally shooting herself in the head through her mouth. Later that evening, while exiting an opium den, Mr Ricoletti was confronted by Emelia, still dressed as a bride, who shot him before disappearing into the fog. Intrigued by Emelia's apparent survival, Holmes takes the case. At the morgue, an antagonistic Dr Hooper informs Holmes that the woman who killed herself, the woman who murdered Mr Ricoletti and the body on hand have all been positively identified as Emelia Ricoletti. Stymied, Holmes loses interest in the case. When the bride apparently returns to murder other men, he deduces that these are copycat crimes.

Months later, Holmes' brother Mycroft refers a case to Holmes: Lady Carmichael's husband, Sir Eustace Carmichael, received a threatening warning in the form of orange pips, sent to him in an envelope. Sir Eustace is uncooperative, describing his wife as "hysterical". That night, Holmes and Watson stake out the house. The ghostly-looking bride appears and disappears in front of them, and the sound of breaking glass is heard. Sir Eustace is heard screaming, then Lady Carmichael. Holmes finds Sir Eustace mortally stabbed, seemingly by Emelia, who frightens Watson and then escapes through a broken window. Lestrade arrives and mentions a note found attached to the dagger which Holmes says was not there when he found the body. The note reads, 'Miss me?', a phrase used by the modern-day Moriarty. After insisting that the case's solution is so simple that even Lestrade could solve it, Holmes meditates. Moriarty appears and taunts Holmes about the mystery of Emelia shooting herself but still being alive, alluding to the similarity to Moriarty shooting himself in the 21st century, before again shooting himself in the head, but still alive with a wound in his head. Moriarty says that "It is not the fall that kills you, Sherlock, It is the landing". Then we see the plane with Sherlock from the episode 'His Last Vow' landing where John and Mycroft are, revealing that the Victorian Sherlock and the case were actually in Sherlock's mind and the episode was really the continuation of the original series.

Mycroft, John, and Mary come inside the plane as Sherlock—ostensibly delirious—rambles about the historical unsolved Ricoletti case. He confesses to Mycroft, John, and Mary that he had used drugs to enter a simulation in his mind palace. In attempting to solve the Ricoletti case, he hopes to learn how Moriarty has returned. Ignoring warnings from Mycroft and John, he once again enters the mind palace.

Holmes is then awakened by Watson in the past with the events of the present seemingly a delusion from the diluted cocaine solution he had injected. Holmes receives a telegram from Mrs Watson saying she has found Emelia's co-conspirators at a desanctified church. There they discover and interrupt a secret group of the Women's Rights Movement (similar to the Suffragette movement in the late 19th Century), whose members include Dr Hooper, Janine Donlevy and Watson's maidservant. Holmes explains that they used a double to fake Emelia's death, allowing her to kill her husband and create the persona of the avenging bride. Already dying, she was later killed at her request by being shot through the mouth; the duplicate corpse was replaced by her actual corpse, the one Holmes and Watson saw at the morgue, for a positive identification. Since then, the women have used the persona of the bride to murder men who wronged them. Sherlock surmises that Lady Carmichael, being a member of the society, killed her husband. He makes his accusation to the approaching bride, assuming that it is Lady Carmichael. But to his shock, the "bride" is revealed to be Moriarty.

Sherlock then seems to awaken in the present, where he insists on digging up Emelia's grave to prove that her body-double was buried under the coffin. While doing so, he hears Emelia's corpse repeatedly whispering, "Do not forget me". The corpse moves to attack him, then Holmes awakens in the past on a ledge next to the Reichenbach Falls (a streamline of the Fall). Moriarty appears and says Holmes is still stuck in his mind palace - Holmes realises that he was still dreaming whilst digging up the corpse. The men fight and Moriarty gains the upper hand, but Watson appears and holds Moriarty at gunpoint. Watson kicks Moriarty off the ledge and then asks Holmes how he can wake up in the present. Holmes decides to fall over the ledge, having confidence he will survive.

Sherlock wakes up in the present on the plane. Mycroft asks John to look after Sherlock, hoping he will not use drugs again. After John leaves the plane, Mycroft opens Sherlock's notebook, revealing the word "Redbeard". Sherlock concludes that Moriarty is indeed dead but had planned events to occur even after his own death. Shifting to the past again, Holmes describes an aeroplane and mobile telephone to a sceptical Watson, then looks out the window onto Baker Street in the present.[2]

Filming

Panoramic view of the entrance area of Tyntesfield

Filming took place at Tyntesfield House, a National Trust property at Wraxall, near Bristol. Scenes were also shot in the cellars of Colston Hall and at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, and other locations in Bath, Somerset. Tyntesfield was mainly used as Sir Eustace's house but also the Watsons' London home.[3]

Broadcast and reception

In the UK, "The Abominable Bride" pulled in strong ratings overnight, scoring more than 8.4 million viewers on New Year's Day for BBC One.[4] The final, official consolidated rating after seven days was 11.6m viewers[5] making it the most watched programme of the week in the UK.

Una Stubbs pictured in costume as Mrs Hudson for the episode in February 2015

The episode was broadcast from 9 p.m. on BBC One, PBS and OTE Cinema 4 HD[6] and in the United Kingdom it was simulcast in 100 cinemas nationwide.[7]

In a special extended version featuring twenty minutes of additional footage, including a guided set-tour of 221B Baker Street with executive producer Moffat and a short making-of with Cumberbatch and Freeman, "The Abominable Bride" was granted a limited release in theatres in Hong Kong, Denmark and Australia on 2 January 2016,[8] in Finland on 3 January 2016, a full release in China on 4 January[9] and a limited release across the United Kingdom and the United States on 5–6 January 2016[10] and in Italy on 12–13 January 2016. It was released in Japan on 19 February 2016.[11]

In cinemas, the film (along with the bonus footage) held strong, particularly in China and South Korea bringing in $5.39 million (£3.68m) on its opening day alone (January 4) in China, according to Deadline, as 1.7 million people in the country saw the one-off episode. It grossed $5 million in the latter country, South Korea.[4] It grossed a total of CN¥161.315 million in China,[12] its largest territory by box office gross.[13] On these successful ratings, BBC Worldwide's Sally de St Croix said "Following on from a strong performance on BBC One, the show has now seen multi-million dollar success at the South Korean and Chinese box offices - an outstanding achievement for a British TV show."[4] It grossed US$578,109 on its opening weekend in Japan.[14]

References

  1. ↑ Jones, Paul (24 October 2015). "What does the title The Abominable Bride tell us about the Sherlock special?". Radio Times. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
  2. ↑ Mark Gatiss confirmed that the implication of the ending seen is that:
    “By having that scene right at the end, where we go back to Victorian London — Victorian Baker Street — and Sherlock explicitly says, ‘It’s an imagined version of what I think the future might be,’ we have really opened a ridiculous window that the entire series of Sherlock might be the drug-induced ravings of the Victorian Sherlock Holmes. Which means we can do absolutely anything.”
  3. ↑ Cork, Tristan (31 December 2015). "Revealed: How Sherlock's The Abominable Bride took over Tyntesfield near Bristol". Western Daily Press. Retrieved 2 January 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 "Sherlock Victorian special tops China's box office". Digital Spy. 2016-01-05. Retrieved 2016-01-11.
  5. ↑ "Top 10 Programmes - BARB". www.barb.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-02-05.
  6. ↑ "Δείτε ταυτόχρονα με την Αγγλία το νέο special επεισόδιο του Sherlock, "The Abominable Bride"". The Huffington Post. 31 December 2015.
  7. ↑ Creighton, Sam (2 January 2016). "Big Screen Benedict": Page 15.
  8. ↑ "Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Australian cinema dates confirmed". Scott Ellis. The Sydney Morning Herald". 5 October 2015. Retrieved 2 January 2016.
  9. ↑ "Sherlock hits Chinese Cinema". Yao Xinyu. 人民网". 5 January 2016. Retrieved 5 January 2016.
  10. ↑ "'Sherlock' coming to theaters for first time". James Hibberd. Entertainment Weekly. 26 October 2015. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
  11. ↑ "SHERLOCK/シャーロック 忌まわしき花嫁".
  12. ↑ "神探夏洛克（2016）". cbooo.cn (in Chinese). Retrieved February 25, 2016.
  13. ↑ "Sherlock: The Abominable Bride". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 25, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Japan Box Office February 20–21, 2016". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 25, 2016.

External links

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