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BBC’s ‘Sherlock’ Will Be Back With Benedict Cumberbatch And Martin Freeman, But Will It Be ‘His Last Bow’?

By Susan Macdonald
Published on: 10:21 PST, Jul 15, 2016

Fans of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are delighted that Sherlock, BBC One’s modern-day adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries, are returning for a fourth season. However, rumors in The Telegram that this may be the final season for Sherlock should not cause fans to worry.

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Steven Moffat, the executive producer of both Sherlock and Doctor Who, pointed out that with their successful film careers, neither Cumberbatch nor Freeman need to do Sherlock, and eventually, their filming schedules will make it impossible for them to do the television mystery show.

“I don’t know how long we can keep it going. I’m personally willing but I’m hardly the main draw. I would be moderately surprised if this was the last time we ever made this show. But it absolutely could be.”

There is a major difference between this “could be” the last season and this will be the last season. Moffat is grateful that Sherlock was able to film a fourth season.

“We do have two film stars in the programme. They haven’t needed to do these jobs for a very long time. They’re coming back because they want to….I’m amazed that we’ve got this far. I thought that once they had become extremely successful, we would only get to do one more series.”

For the many American fans who complained that three episodes do not constitute a season, Moffat explained the facts of life.

“There’s never going to come a time when we do a longer run, because this is what the series has become. It’s an occasional treat where you get three movies. It’s how it works.”

Moffat pointed out that if Benedict Cumberbatch (now playing Dr. Stephen Strange in the new Marvel movie Dr. Strange) and Martin Freeman (who recently played Everett Ross in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War and FBI Agent Phil Rask in StartUp) are unable to film a fifth season of Sherlock in the near future, there is no reason that future episodes — possibly one-shots like “The Abominable Bride” — could not be filmed down the road, featuring an older Holmes and Watson. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “His Last Bow,” for example, is set during World War I rather than Queen Victoria’s reign, and featured an elderly spy-hunting Holmes in his last case before he retires.

“That’s why I think it’s unlikely that we’ve completely finished it. There would be nothing strange in stopping for a while. It could go on forever, coming back now and again.”

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Entertainment Weekly said the fourth season of Sherlock will be released in 2017. The Nerdist said that Season 4 of Sherlock could be released as early as January, 2017, although the BBC has not yet given a specific date.

The fourth season of Sherlock will focus on some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lesser known stories. Sir Arthur wrote four novels and 56 short stories about Sherlock Holmes between 1887 and 1927. One of the episodes is based off the short story “The Dying Detective,” and will feature Toby Smith as Culverton Smith. Toby Smith played the villainous Dr. Zola in Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Another Toby may be in the fourth season of Sherlock. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, The Sign of the Four, Holmes borrows a dog named Toby to track a scent. Holmes said he would “rather have Toby’s help than that of the whole detective force in London.” The first picture officially released by the BBC for season 4 of Sherlock shows Benedict Cumberbatch with a dog. Could this be the literary Toby? However, the TV show has already made an allusion to the canonical Toby by giving Molly Hooper, a pathologist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital with a crush on Sherlock Holmes, a cat named Toby.

Are you looking forward to the return of Sherlock?

[Image via BBC]

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