The New Year’s Day episode of Sherlock was supposedly a one-off ‘special’ and was the most eagerly anticipated highlight of the Christmas schedule.

In fact it was a farce – a self-indulgent, ill-conceived, mess that threatened to ruin the show’s reputation as one of the best programmes on British television.

By the end it had become so nonsensical and over-complicated the various endings even included ‘it was all a dream’ – or seemed to.

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Sherlock Holmes found himself in Victorian London in the one-off New Year's special

The Abominable Bride saw a murderous woman, pictured, apparently kill herself before returning to life

Tonight's stand-alone episode of Sherlock Holmes, The Abominable Bride, will be set in the Victorian Era

The question of how Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman will head into Victorian era is an unanswered question. The characters will be dressed in Victorian attire

‘It was all a drug trip’ and that hoary old Holmes chestnut ‘it was all in my mind palace’ followed for good measure.

This was after the first hour, which had found Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson popping up in 1895 rather than the twenty-first century where the previous nine episodes had been set to such effect.

The whole point of BBC’s uber-successful, ultra-modern, series was bringing Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories and characters into the present day – its USP and one of the best things about it - not least because of the flair with which Moffat blended the two periods.

Mycroft returned but not was we know him - with the character putting on a huge amount of weight

Sherlock and friends all return and his methods of solving mysteries remained the same despite the time shift

The super sleuth found himself contending with a secret society of vengeful women at one point

Sherlock's nemesis Moriarty returned - but is he alive or dead was the question on everyone's lips

The flat at 221B Baker Street had a fireplace and a laptop. Moriarty had Staying Alive as his ringtone.

Watson, a veteran from the war in Afghanistan, called Holmes ‘a d***head’and ‘a drama queen.’

In ‘The Abominable Bride’ though telegrams replaced tweets with quills instead of Holmes’ trademark smart phone.

The clever, cool, use of smart-phones, texts, and CSI-style forensics were replaced by hoary old images of horse-drawn carriages, deerstalkers, and policemen with alarming sideburns. What a bore. The old-school, authentic, Sherlock Holmes has been done before – and much better, namely with Jeremy Brett in the 1980s.

Questions remain over whether Andrew Scott's evil mastermind Jim Moriarty, left, is alive and we still know little about Dr Watson's mysterious wife Mary, right, who turned out to be a secret agent in the modern show,

‘A playful conceit’, the Beeb called it, while Cumberbatch himself said when he first heard of the idea he thought it was ‘madness. I thought they’d lost the plot.’

He even expressed the fear that it had ‘jumped the shark’ – the term named after Happy Days that the media uses for shows that have done something so fatal its reputation is irredeemable, finished.

You could also call it The Curse of Steven Moffat, the brains and imagination behind both Sherlock and of course Doctor Who.

Flitting between time periods is his speciality, his obsession, and on this evidence, his Achilles heel.

Making an episode set largely in the Victorian era was an opportunity for Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman he said he found ‘irresistible.’

It was more an instance of Moffat having his cake and eating it (or Sherlock’s case, having his opium and smoking it).

The message was clear: it was his show and he could do what he wanted with it – make Sherlock go anywhere.

Here he made Sherlock a poor man’s Doctor Who – someone who could only time-travel in his ‘mind palace.’

The Abominable Bride had two fatal flaws: it was both too basic and too complicated.

As Holmes kept pointing out ‘there are no such things as ghosts.’ The ghost story it was based on was about as scary as a ride on Brighton pier.

At the same time, like many of Moffat’s Doctor Who extravaganzas, it was too clever by half – with endless ostentatiously witty quips and references to previous episodes.

SAME OLD SHERLOCK: A DIFFERENT ERA BUT THE SAME SHOW AT HEART Although it was a very different setting we find Cumberbatch and Freeman in, their take on their characters remained the same. There are plenty of nods to the 21st century version of the show, from the detective's methods of solving crimes to the banter between the duo and their housekeeper Mrs Hudson. Cumberbatch's Sherlock banters with Una Stubbs' Mrs Hudson in the Sherlock special trailer, pictured, Here are the similarities we saw The 21st century Dr Watson records his adventures with Sherlock via a series of blogs, and in the special Martin Freeman's physician jots down their escapades as books. Just like in the modern version, he gets plenty of fame and flack for his writing.

Sherlock uses his 'mind palace' in both settings - where the detective uses a photographic memory to visualise everything he has seen, with the audience taken along for the ride. As seen in the trailer, Holmes is up to his old tricks again, reflecting on a crime scene from the comfort of his armchair.

The same goes for the show's signature camerawork - with pauses and pans aplenty as the viewer is given every chance to pick up on the clues left behind.

The 'bromance' between Holmes and Watson is very much the same, whatever the era. They squabble and bicker like an old married couple, even debating what clothes they should wear when they go to the morgue.

One of the major changes in the third series was the addition of Amanda Abbington as Watson's mysterious wife Mary. She turned out to be some kind of secret agent with a very deadly set of skills, even shooting Sherlock when he found her on an assassination mission. Mary returns for the special, and is just as duplicitous.

No matter what century he's in, Cumberbatch's Sherlock still isn't keen on his deerstalker hat. In past episodes 21st century Sherlock has bemoaned being pictured in the paper wearing it, and in the trailer he questions why Watson has picked it out for him before being told: 'You're Sherlock Holmes, wear the damn hat!' Advertisement

‘He’s always been like that,’ the man who introduced Watson to Holmes told him, as he had in the show’s first ever episode. In fact the scene of their first meeting was identical – except with silly hats and funny moustaches.

‘I’ve had to grown this moustache so that people won’t recognise me,’ Watson told Mrs Hudson knowingly.

Watson’s wife Mary and Molly from the mortuary appeared in disguise (the latter as a man) and by the time, Moriarty and the Suffragettes arrived only the most geeky Sherlock fans probably had a clue what was even supposed to be going on.

‘Is this silly enough for you yet? Is it gothic enough?’ Moriarty mocked Sherlock at one point. ‘This is all in your mind, you’re dreaming.’

It was all very ‘conceptual’ and ‘post-modern’ and hard to care less about.

Let’s hope it doesn’t spark a trend or what will it be next – a Christmas special of EastEnders set in ye olde Queen Vic? Luther going back in time after Jack The Ripper?

Even the premise of a New Year’s Day special set in the Victorian era was not enough for Moffat. In the final twenty minutes, he crow-barred in a convoluted ‘explanation’ that only made things more complicated not less.

We were in the present day after all. Everything we had seen had not taken place in 1895 but the equivalent of one of Sherlock’s drug-addled dreams.

‘I was in my mind palace and running an experiment - about how would I have solved the crime if I’d been there in 1895,’ he told his brother Mycroft.

If you say so...

As excuses go it would hardly cut it.

Even Mycroft thought so, suspecting Sherlock had taken too much cocaine or morphine and had just been tripping.

How Steven Moffat dreamt it all up God only knows. And why he thought Sherlock’s fans would forgive him such indulgence was anyone’s guess.

The special, which creators promise will be 'full-blooded Victorian Gothic', is called the Abominable Bride. It is a stand-alone episode from the series, which is set in modern day London