Sherlock fans have been given their first glimpse at the BBC’s Sherlock Christmas special, which sees Holmes and Watson transported back to the Victorian era for a one-off stand-alone case.

“The stage is set. The curtain rises. We are ready to begin,” says Holmes at the start of the trailer for the special, which will air on BBC One in the UK and PBS Masterpiece in the US, and what looks to be a gothic and gloomy iteration of the Bafta-winning show.

The visuals for the special were first revealed at San Diego’s Comic Con in July with creator Steven Moffat and Sue Vertue promising “a trip back in time to Victorian London”.

For its four previous seasons, the show has been set in the modern era; this is a one-off “bubble episode” set in Victorian 1895. It makes Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman the only Holmes and Watson actors to portray the sleuths in both classical and contemporary settings apart from Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

Suggesting that viewers are in for something creepier than previous installments of Sherlock, Moffat said: “Ghost stories work better in a Victorian setting. This strand of Doyle original stories that are creepy and scary, and the chillers, we haven’t done much with in the modern show. But putting it back into Victorian times, you think it’s a chance to do a ghost story, really – a creepy, scary one.”