Sherlock's The Abominable Bride special tops BBC iPlayer charts

The one-off New Year's Day episode was requested 2.3 million times in January 2016

Emma Daly

Published: Thursday, 3 March 2016 at 0:25 pm

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on pinterest
Share on reddit
Email to a friend

BBC's one-off Sherlock special 'The Abominable Bride' has topped the iPlayer charts for January 2016.

The New Year's Day episode, which saw Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock and Martin Freeman's Watson take the story to Victorian London, was requested 2.3 million times.

This makes it the most-requested show of January, with the first episode of War and Peace coming in second with 1.44 million requests and the second part of the EastEnders New Year's Day episode earning 1.36 million.

It had been two years since Cumberbatch, Freeman, Mark Gatiss and co had last been on our screens, but the 90-minute special is just an amuse-bouche compared to the full upcoming fourth series, due to start filming in the spring.

The New Year special's overnight figures at the time were equally impressive, reaching 8.4 million.

More like this

Sherlock has a habit of topping the iPlayer chart, scooping 2014's most-requested show of the year too with 4.2 million requests.

This year the debut episode of The Voice series 5 also scored well with 1.45 million requests (placing 6th on the list) and David Walliams' Billionaire Boy with 1.04 million (placing 10th).

Meanwhile, BBC iPlayer’s exclusive comedy-drama film The Rack Pack made it into the top 20 most requested titles in January in its first two weeks of availability. With close to one million requests in total, the drama is currently the most successful BBC iPlayer Original to date.