I’m telling you – 2016 television is downhill from here on.

From a negligible half-line in one of the 60 stories by Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes – the detective mentions “the case of Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife” as he’s going through old files in The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual – Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat built 90 minutes of the fastest, funniest, flashiest, cleverest, most demanding, ridiculous and brilliant drama there is likely to be until … well, possibly until the next Sherlock comes along, sometime in 2017 we are told…

It was never twins. There were doubles, and doublings-back, and parallels aplenty, there were storylines nesting inside storylines nesting inside storylines, dreams inside realities and out again, there were riffs on the riffs we know from the “real” series – the detective plucks imaginary cuttings from the air instead of websites and images and Watson is summoned by Holmes via telegram instead of text (“Come at once. If convenient. If not convenient, come all the same” – because Sherlock is a constant) – but never twins.

It was an utterly dazzling display, with bravura performances from the actors – Cumberbatch and Scott’s first scene together being among the finest they have ever had – and the plotting (if you stayed with it, and if you didn’t – no matter. That’s what the rewind button’s for. In the meantime, just marvel at the treasures being poured out before you) was a thing of wonder.

…In the meantime, let’s enjoy the fact that there was a joyous and sumptuous celebration of what television and talent that trusts in itself can do, all tipped out in one gorgeous, unstoppable rush. Watching it was like plunging down the Reichenbach Falls.

Missed you.