This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
After nine installments of "Sherlock" set in the present day, writers/producers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have set their newest edition in Victorian England.
"Well, we checked the books and discovered we got it wrong," Moffat said. "I said to Mark, 'We should have read [the books] first.' "
He was kidding. Moffat ("Doctor Who," "Coupling") is a funny guy.
But if you're looking for some profound reason for "Sherlock" taking a trip to the 19th century, there isn't one. They're doing it "just because we can, really," according to Moffat.
Thus the 90-minute "Sherlock: The Abominable Bride" will air Friday, Jan. 1, at 8 p.m. on PBS — KUED-Ch. 7 in Utah, within hours of its premiere in the U.K.
Set in 1895, Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) are presented with a murder case that's also a ghost story. Thomas Ricoletti (Gerald Kyd) is surprised to see his wife (Natasha O'Keeffe) dressed in her old wedding gown just a few hours after she took her own life. And Mrs. Ricoletti's ghost is prowling the streets with an unslakable thirst for revenge.
"Ghost stories work better in a Victorian setting," said Moffat, pointing to how Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories were often "creepy and scary" — something "we haven't done much with in the modern show."
"But putting it back into Victorian times, it's a chance to do a ghost story — really a creepy, a scary one. Other than that, it's remarkably similar."
Moffat and Gatiss were kicking around the idea of doing "maybe one scene or some dream sequence or something" set in the 1890s, when the original "Sherlock" stories were set.
"And then we just thought — why don't we just do it? Why don't we just do a Victorian one?" Moffat said. "We never bothered to explain what we were doing in modern-day London. So why do we have to bother explaining what they're doing in Victorian London, when that's where they're supposed to be?"
And there is no explanation. "The Abominable Bride" is simply a Sherlock Holmes mystery with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson wearing Victorian-era clothes and acting like Victorian-era men.
The idea for the updated version originated when Moffat and Gatiss were on a train, talking about how much they like the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce movies that took the characters into the 1940s.
"And we kept saying to each other, 'Somebody will do that again, and that will be a huge hit,' " Moffat said. "It didn't really occur to us to do anything about it until I happened to mention it to Sue."
That would be Sue Vertue, Moffat's wife and the producer of "Sherlock." And she urged the two to act on their idea.
"It's remarkable how it was easy to update in the first place," Moffat said. The biggest change was updating the female characters because in Doyle's original stories and novels, "the women didn't speak," Moffat said, exaggerating, but not too much.
And in the writing, there was only "a tiny change to the way they speak," according to Vertue. A bit of a change to slang, and that's about it.
"Actually, people spoke in Victorian times really quite like they speak now," Moffat said. "If you read the dialogue in Doyle's stories, it sounds more modern than a lot of the adaptations of those stories, because we have a slightly exaggerated notion of what people spoke like."
The 1895 version of Watson is "a bit more upright," and the 1895 Holmes "has the manners of a the Victorian gentleman" and "is a lot less brattish," Moffat said. "They're the same people, seen through the prism of a different time and fitting in to a different society."
This is a one-time detour from the present-day "Sherlock" installments. Three more of those go into production this spring for telecast … sometime during the 2016-17 TV season.
"Next one is going to be set in the starship," Moffat said.
He was just joking.
Twitter: @ScottDPierce —
Happy New Year
P "Sherlock: The Abominable Bride" airs Friday at 8 p.m. on KUED-Ch. 7.