Sherlock – The Game Is Now is an escape room designed by Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and Time Run (responsible for a series of renowned Escape Rooms in London).
“The Official Sherlock Live Experience is a 100 minute immersive escape game for teams of 4-6 people.”
But then, if you scroll a bit further down, you get:
“Located in a secret venue in the heart of London, this 90-minute cinematic adventure combines the unique world of Sherlock with the very best of escape games.”
If you look at the article published online by the Evening Standard on 28/11/2018, you will read:
“Each team of four to six people goes to three “rooms” during the 60-minute game, solving mysteries to progress to the next stage. The nature of the “plot” is a secret, but one representative hinted that players will be more concerned with “saving themselves”, rather than other people. Teams get a 10-minute debrief at the end before moving on to an Arthur Conan Doyle bar for refreshments.” (…)“Tickets start at £54 a person, with the total experience taking 110 minutes.”
So, however long the Escape Room actually is, we can count on a “cinematic experience”, that will include original video and audio sequences from the cast of the show. There will also be live actors which I assume will give us our briefing and debriefing.
The actual plot is still a mystery, but the official site gives us a tease in form of a small introduction:
“London needs Sherlock. Instead it has you. Sherlock is absent. As a rash of break-ins ripple across the capital, one thing is clear: his brilliance is required. Mycroft Holmes has put out the call. The Network seeks recruits: volunteers with sharp eyes, keen wits and a hunger for adventure. Can you step into the shoes of the legendary detective? Good luck: The Game Is Now.”
And two actual videos, one where Mycroft himself makes “an appeal” for us to join The Network and another where Sherlock calls out The Network members to “put everything aside” and help him on “the greatest crisis” of his career. (but wasn’t he supposed to be missing?)
Something is fishy. We’ll discuss the videos on a later post.
C. The why
Here is another important question we still can’t answer for sure.
To set a trap and incarcerate all Johnlockers and TJCLers in the basement to keep Arwel company? as @thejohnlockoutletwarned us
Some people have posted several theories. Even Mark Gatiss had something to say in the interview aired by BBC London News on 28/11/2018, posted on Tumblr by @afishlearningpoetry and transcribed by @garkgatiss:
MG: Wait, wait, that is Series Five! [more laughter] It’s very meta. The entire cast and crew are trapped inside their own escape room, for three 90-minute episodes—
I have my own theory, which I will share when we look at the videos.
D. The when
This is a topic that has sparked some confusion. The Escape Room was originally set to open on the 23rd of October, but then was pushed to early December, as we can see in the trailers that came out so far. I haven’t found any information about the actual day, though.
The same Evening Standard article I mentioned says that December will be the “soft-lauch” and that tickets are already sold-out for that month. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t, either), a “soft-lauch” is a release of a product to a limited public before being available to the general public. During that time, the production team will gather feedback and make adjustments before doing the “hard-launch” (i.e. release it to the general public). I imagine they have made the tickets available for a smaller amount of people so they can practice and make sure everything is running smoothly before opening to the bigger public in January.
Tickets are still available from January until May. We still don’t know if there is going to be new dates after that.
I’ve been poking around the official site and the not-very-user-friendly ticket calendar. It shows that indeed December is fully booked. The the calendar will show you all the possible (free and booked) slots for every day, even those in November when we knew the Escape Room was still closed. What caught my eye is that there are a few closed days, like the 25th and 31st of December (for obvious reasons) but also the 3rd of December. Could that be the opening day? I would imagine they would want to throw a party or do a press release or something.
D. The where
The location of the room was secret for a long time, but it has been made public since 28/11/2018 when the official tweeter feed twitted:
The official site now also has the more detailed information:
In sum, the Escape Room entrance will be found in West 12 Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush in the guise of Doyle’s Opticians.
So, this is what I gathered from my “research”. Please feel free to comment and add any info you think is relevant.
“We have a plan to top it. And I do think our plan is devastating. We’ve practically reduced our cast to tears telling them the plan… we’re probably more excited that we’ve ever been about Sherlock,” Moffat told reporters asking if he thought the next season could beat season three’s epic run.
Gatiss chimed in later that night: “We’re going to try to take it somewhere we’ve never been before — and I don’t mean outer space. It will be challenging place to go. We always start with a re-introduction that builds toward a darker climax — we might just be going darker [from the outset]. We got a very, very good set of ideas.”
I don’t know if anyone’s pointed this out already but I was rewatching earlier episodes and I just noticed that John’s shirt on TGG and MHR are exactly the same but different in color.
John’s shirt in a scene in TGG where John is having a ‘domestic’ with Sherlock.
Red is the color of extremes. It’s the color of passionate love, seduction, violence, danger, anger, and adventure. Things John experience while he’s living with Sherlock. Meanwhile…
John’s shirt in MHR in a scene in John and Mary’s flat where John is presumably still adjusting to domestic life with Mary. Blue, as we all know, is typically associated with sadness, loneliness, and depression – things John experience while he’s living with Mary, his future wife.
It just makes me extra sad that John is willing to spend the rest of his life ‘in blue’ by proposing to Mary.
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