BBC

In order to see this embed, you must give consent to Social Media cookies. Open my cookie preferences.

When Steven Moffat revealed the Sherlock special at San Diego Comic Con, pretty much all that was said was that the standalone adventure would take place in Victorian London. Now, we finally know a little more about the great detective's next case.


Speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour in America, Moffat spilled some details on the long-awaited return of Holmes and Watson, as played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. Most interestingly, that the period outing allows them to better delve into original Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle's spookier mysteries -- Victorian Sherlock will be telling viewers a ghost story.

Asked about taking the present day cast and telling a story in Doyle's time, Moffat said: "The main difference I would say, the only temperature change moving it to Victorian from Modern is ghost stories work better in the Victorian setting. Doyle stories that are scary chillers we haven't done much. Victorian era gives us a chance to do a creepy one; a scary one."

Despite featuring the same cast, viewers may see slightly different interpretations of the characters though. "Sherlock Holmes has the manners of a Victorian gentleman which he doesn't have in modern day," Moffat teased. "He's less brattish. I'd say this Sherlock is a little more polished."

One area where the television special will be deviating from Victorian custom and even Doyle's own literature though, is giving the female cast more of a presence. "Transferring it back to its original era we realised the women don't speak," Moffat said of the original material. "Mrs Hudson has one line. Mary, after her first story, doesn't really say anything. In one story she gets her husband's name wrong in one of the great continuity errors in history. [We have] characters who don't really have a place in the original."


After joking that he and Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss had suddenly realised they'd been getting the books wrong all this time by setting them in the present, Moffat said the origins of the special were -- much like the truth behind most of Holmes' mysteries, startlingly mundane. The 'return' to a Victorian setting was "just because we can, really. We said, 'Could we maybe do one scene or a dream sequence?' Then we said why don't we just do it? We never bothered explaining why he's in modern day London. Why explain why we're in Victorian [times]?"

Don't get too accustomed to classic era Sherlock though -- the special isn't intended to set up more stories in the era. "Really this is a one-off unless we go mad and set it in the 1940s and have him fight Hitler. Nothing’s inconceivable if you have bad taste."

However, there is (potentially) good news for fans of contemporary Holmes and Watson. Moffat added "we go back to doing Sherlock next year -- unless I'm lying or we change our minds." One thing he didn't reveal though was the air date for the Sherlock special, either on the BBC in the UK or on PBS in the US. A Christmas or New Year's screening seems likely but at present "The Case of the Missing Broadcast" is yet to be solved.