No sooner had the closing credits faded on the Great British Bake Off and viewers were whipped into another frenzy as the BBC teased Sherlock fans with a teaser trailer for the upcoming fourth series.
And the good news is that the show looks set to start 2017 with a bang when episode one is screened on BBC1 on January 1st with an episode called The Six Thatchers.
It’s not a game anymore. #Sherlock season 4 coming in 2017…https://t.co/Voh3PboH77
— Sherlock (@Sherlock221B) July 24, 2016
It will be followed by episode two called The Lying Detective.
The 90 second clip opens with Moriaty flashing up on screen saying, ‘Miss me?”, followed by Sherlock ominously musing, “Something is coming. Maybe it’s Moriarty. Maybe it’s not. But something is coming…”
Whatever it is, it looks pretty amazing, though to be honest, we haven’t got the foggiest what’s going on.
All we can muster from the blink and you’ll miss it clip is there are girls wielding guns, car chases, explosions and Toby Jones looking pretty sinister and the hint that Andrew Scott could be back as Moriaty! Oh fingers crossed that he is.
Needless to say fans of the series were in hysterics at the trailer – which – fact fans – had actually been screen back in July, minus the transmission date!
Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch this week hinted that the next series will be so dramatic fans might need a lie down after its finished and suggested that this next series could be the last we see of it for a while.
“I think there will be a lull. I don’t think it will be in a year and a half necessarily but we will wait and see and maybe it will be,” he is reported to have said.
“First and foremost we have got a fourth series for people to watch and understand and when they watch it they might go ‘Oh yeah, maybe there does need to be a break now’ because of what happens in it. No spoilers!”
Well we hope that doesn’t mean that his burgeoning Hollywood caraeer means that Sherlock is no more.
Well apparently not, according to Cumbo! He says the producers of his latest big budget movie Doctor Strange actually worked around his Sherlock schedule so that he could appear in the film!
“[Producers] moved the schedule to accommodate Sherlock, there is a lot of mutual love between those two enterprises and there is no reason why one cancels out the other.”
However, rumours that the upcoming series could be the last were rife following Cumbo’s comment, ‘it’s a painful thing to say, but maybe series four is it.’
However, he was fast to reassure ravenous fans that Sherlock still has a future explained that his comments had been twisted.
“I know where this [rumour] came from, “ he has said. “This came from any kind of news outlet going, ‘oh we really need a story’, so they sort of shipped out this quote which said that I said, ‘this is the last one’, which is not what I said.
“I said, ‘for the time being’. And you’ll see when you watch [the new series], that there’s a good reason why I said that.
“We won’t be doing one immediately after this one airs. That’s all I meant. We never ever say never on that show. We love doing it.’
“There might come a time [when the show ends], or there might come a time when there’s a big gap. That’s a possibility.”
Sherlock returns on January 1st.