The Sherlock special is coming soon! We know, because it says so on the new trailer. But what else can we learn from this 90-second slice of Victorian detective goodness?


Well, there’s a possible hint at some plot details, some neat references to classic stories, some nice little callbacks to previous episodes – and a brand-new dressing gown! What more could you want? Apart from the actual episode, of course…

It could be based on the Adventure of the Five Orange Pips

This original Sherlock Holmes short story is the tale of a young man whose dark past comes back to haunt him. Sherlock’s statement that “we all have a past Watson, ghosts. They are the shadows that define our every sunny day” certainly gels with that but it’s one scene in particular that suggests a solid link.

When you watch the trailer it’s hard to be sure what these rows of strange pointy things are but if you turn up the brightness it looks very much as though these are figures dressed in the garb of the Ku Klux Klan, the very organisation at the heart of the mystery of the Five Orange Pips.

The Hound of the Baskervilles makes an appearance

In the first trailer for the special, Holmes and Mrs Hudson tease Dr Watson about one of his stories – “the dog one” – and here we see a lovely visual reference to it on the door to their flat.

The stained glass depicts a giant hound on top of a hill – an almost exact copy of the illustration on the cover of certain literary editions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.

“The name’s Sherlock Holmes…

…and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

We don’t yet know who Sherlock is saying this to in the trailer but fans will have spotted that it’s word for word the sign-off Sherlock leaves John with at the end of their first ever meeting in the series (around 2:17 below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G93CralgR0Y

There’s that Jeremy Brett sequence again

We only see a few frames of it here but it’s worth mentioning again that a sequence in the special is basically a shot-for-shot remake of the titles of ITV’s classic 1980s version of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett (see below). You can watch the whole thing here, complete with a tantalising hint of the original theme tune.

Sherlock has a plush new dressing gown – and a plush old one

We all love Sherlock’s dressing gowns.

There’s the blue one he wears while being bored and shooting things from the sofa…

And the beige one he wears while playing the violin or dancing. Or travelling back to the 19th-century…

But this new Victorian one – all plush and purple and worn over the suit – really is gorgeous…


Watch the full trailer here: