The 89 minutes of feature film that this title proclaims is actually episode 284 of 291 in a TV series. 

The BBC doesn’t have exclusive rights to Sherlock Holmes, but it does have a primus inter pares hold on a milch-cow franchise from which filmmakers in many languages have suckled for more than a century. Sherlock’s British. No other nation can claim better authenticity in exploiting Conan Doyle’s hero.

In 1895, deranged bride Emilia Ricoletti (Natasha O’Keeffe) commits suicide in public. Later she shoots her husband. Get it? Of course we don’t. And it’s going to take Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) more than a century to resolve the crime. 

Comedy mingles with drama among literary references often so blatant as to be embarrassing. Douglas Mackinnon’s direction has good pace and vision. There are references to matters as relevant in our time as they were in 1895 – war in Afghanistan, the suffragette movement.

Mary Watson takes a job working for Mycroft (Mark Gattis). Moriarty (Andrew Scott) and Holmes wrassel to the death on the edge of the Reichenbach waterfall. Mrs Hudson (Una Stubbs) can always find some shortcoming about which to castigate her tenant. Inspector Lestrade (Rupert Graves) hovers in the background. 

It’s less a question of how Madame Ricoletti did it or why, than how well writers Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat have crafted a film that teaches us nothing but offers real satisfactions.

When its season here will start is hard to discover, but preview screenings were sold out all over town. Indeed, at the session of my choice, I got the last vacant seat!

At Palace Electric, Dendy, Capitol 6, Hoyts Belconnen and Limelight