"Sherlock: Abominable Bride" special aired on New Year's Day, Jan. 1 on BBC UK and on PBS for U.S. viewers.
According to Deadline, "The Abominable Bride" became the most watched program on Jan. 1. The almost two-hour episode garnered 8.4 million viewers on BBC One with 34.7 shares. Despite the high milestone, the episode still ranked lower against the premiere episode of "Sherlock" Season 3 in January 2014.
BBC has earlier released the official synopsis. The special TV event from the popular comedic crime procedural series was aired during the New Year's Day. Helmed by Douglas MacKinnon, "Sherlock: Abominable Bride" is written by the showrunners and co-creator Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.
The New Year's Eve TV special episode had a unique twist because it was set in the Victorian Era, which paid homage to the original timeline from Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel.
Set in 1895, "The Abominable Bride" featured the investigative duo of Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and former military man Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman) as they take an odd case. Sherlock and Watson helped out a widower gentleman who saw an apparition of his dead wife. The only problem to that case is that Mrs. Ricoletti had killed herself that brought her demise.
"Sherlock: The Abominable Bride" will mark the comeback of regular cast members including Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson, Amanda Abbington as Mary Morstan, Rupert Graves as Greg Lestrade, Una Stubbs as Mrs. Hudson and Louise Brealey as Molly Hooper.
The cast is joined by the episode's main characters including Gerald Kyd as Thomas Ricoletti and Natasha O'Keeffe as Emilia Ricoletti.
Based on the ratings from Metacritic, the episode got a 7.9 out of 10 score and received "generally favorable reviews" from 19 reviewers.
Indie Wire's Kaite Welsh, who gave a perfect 100 rating. She said, "If it takes talent to make a good cliché work, making a bad one brilliant is Holmes-level genius."
"The special ... didn't just irritate me; it made me actively angry at how it wasted a great idea in the name of pointless complications and fan service," Todd VanDerWerff of VOX said in his review. He only gave 30 points for the special "Sherlock" episode.
Meanwhile, The A.V. Club reviewer Allison Shoemaker worked as the mediator for the two other reviews with her 58 rating.
"Sherlock" Season 4 is set to be released in 2017.
