David Farnor | On 11, Dec 2016

The new trailer for Sherlock’s fourth season has arrived – and it raises some burning questions.

Top of the heap is the one posed by Toby Jones’ Culverton Smith: “What’s the very worst thing you can do to your very best friends?”

The team behind Sherlock have made no secret about the darkness that’s in store in the sleuth’s new season, but it’s becoming increasingly clear with every new teaser that creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss aren’t pulling their punches. Burning buildings, guns and – most ominous of all – talk of serious emotions are all signs of bad things to come on New Year’s Day, when Season 4 begins at 8.30pm with The Six Thatchers.

What’s the worst thing you can do to your friends? Show them this video and make them wait until then.

 

Sherlock Season 4 trailer unveils New Year’s Day air date

27th October 2016

Car chases. Fist fights. Toby Jones laughing cruelly. All of these things and more are in the first full trailer for Sherlock Season 4.

The teaser, broadcast on BBC One right after the final of The Great British Bake Off, promptly sent Twitter into a frenzy of excitement, as Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman return as Holmes and Watson one more time. While most of the details are still kept closely under wraps – read on for the episode titles and what they may mean – one thing we do know for sure now is that Sherlock Season 4 will premiere on 1st January 2017.

Here’s the new trailer:

 

Sherlock Season 4 episode titles revealed

27th September 2016

The first two episode titles for the next season of Sherlock have been revealed.

It’s become something of a tradition for the BBC’s update of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective to make as much a mystery of its episodes’ titles as the actual cases in them. Sure enough, at Comic-Con this summer, some cryptic clues were given to hint at what the names of Season 4’s outings might be. At the Sherlocked convention last weekend, the exact titles were confirmed: Episode 1 will be called The Six Thatchers and Episode 2 will be called The Lying Detective.

In case you missed it, here's the titles of the first two episodes of #Sherlock series 4. Intriguing… pic.twitter.com/YSugq8Gj7C

— Sherlock (@Sherlock221B) September 25, 2016

Traditionally, the titles refer back to Conan Doyle stories, with the plots often containing playful updates of various original tales. So what do these ones mean? Let’s start with the second, which the Internet generally agrees is a reference to The Adventure of the Dying Detective, which featured a character called Culverton Smith – and “Smith” was one of the episode clues unveiled at Comic-Con.

The Lying Detective eh..? Interesting… #Sherlocked

— amanda abbington (@CHIMPSINSOCKS) September 25, 2016

Thatcher was another of the three clues. Taking into account the full title, it’s most likely a reference to The Six Napoleons, a story about attempts to solve the serial destruction of lots of different busts of Napoleon. That, however, is already part of the show’s canon, with the official John Watson blog containing a post from “19th December” titled The Six Thatchers.

Here’s the opening of that blog entry: “I’d taken Sherlock out Christmas shopping which, looking back, wasn’t the best of ideas. He’d shouted at a Father Christmas that he was bored and wanted a nice juicy murder for Christmas – in front of a bunch of kids and their parents. Escorted back to the flat by the police, we found a student, Sally Barnicot, waiting for us. After Sherlock had managed to insult her about her looks and the way she was dressed, she told us about a murder that had taken place at her university. Pietro Venucci, an art student, and Sally’s best friend had been found stabbed in the pottery room.”

We’d recommend not reading further than that if you want to know what happens next, although would Moffat and Gatiss really have an episode synopsis already out in the open? That’s unlikely. Which means there’s probably something even more mysterious in store…

Fortunately, we won’t have to wait much longer, with Season 4 of Sherlock expected to air in January 2017.

Other highlights from Sherlocked include the impressive trivia that Sherlock’s coat remains the same one from the first season…

Sue Vertue confirms that Sherlock’s coat hasn't changed in series four. Steven Moffat insists it should never change.

— Sherlock (@Sherlock221B) September 25, 2016

Benedict Cumberbatch praising Martin Freeman for his comic timing…

Following Martin's audition, Benedict said he raised his game and they had to cast him. He adds his comic timing is second to none.

— Sherlock (@Sherlock221B) September 25, 2016

… and Louise Brealey revealing that she wore the same suit as Daniel Radcliffe from The Woman in Black during last year’s Christmas episode, The Abominable Bride, which won an Emmy last week.

Louise Brealey at @SherlockedEvent: Was fun dressing up as a man. Suit was the one Daniel Radcliffe wore in the Woman in Black

— Sherlock (@Sherlock221B) September 25, 2016

 

Sherlock Season 4 trailer – and clues for the episode titles

25th July 2016

“Something’s coming,” says Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in the trailer for Season 4. Is it Moriarty? Is it not? The teaser, released at Comic-Con this weekend, doesn’t make it clear – but what it does reveal is just how dark the BBC’s modern take on the detective will become.

“It’s not a game anymore,” promises the season’s tagline, and from Mrs. Hudson spitting insults at Holmes to Cumberbatch’s grizzled stubble, creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss sure aren’t kidding.

The spectre of Andrew Scott looms over the teaser, but we do get our first glimpse of Toby Jones, whom we know is definitely going to star in the next series. Toby will appear in the second episode of the three-part series, directed by Nick Hurran (His Last Vow).

“I’m excited and intrigued by the character I shall be playing in Sherlock…” he said, when his casting was announced, with Moffat teasing that Jones would play “one of Doyle’s finest villains”. (Watch out for his maniacal laugh.)

Season 4 begins with Sherlock back once more on British soil, as Martin Freeman’s Watson and his wife, Mary (Amanda Abbington), prepare for their biggest ever challenge: becoming parents for the first time.

The first of the three feature-length episodes will be directed by Rachel Talalay, who has previously directed Doctor Who, The Flash and The Wind In The Willows.

Sherlock is produced by Sue Vertue, and the executive producers are Beryl Vertue, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for Hartswood Films, Bethan Jones for BBC Cymru Wales and Rebecca Eaton for Masterpiece. It is distributed internationally by BBC Worldwide.

“Sherlock series four – here we go again! Whatever else we do, wherever we all go, all roads lead back to Baker Street – and it always feels like coming home,” said Moffat and Gatiss in a statement earlier this year. “Ghosts of the past are rising in the lives of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson bringing adventure, romance and terror in their wake. This is the story we’ve been telling from the beginning. A story about to reach its climax.”

“There’s an evolution to all the characters,” Cumberbatch told fans at the Comic-Con panel. “There’s a lot of that in the new season. A lot of things come home to roost. It’s the thing of what’s familiar, and it’s the thing of what confounds expectations. What we’re doing now is so ambitious.”

“[This is] the darkest that Mark and Steven have written,” added Abbington. “If we can pull this off, then it’s amazing.”

“It’s a genuine roller coaster,” Cumberbatch continued. “The learning curve is massive – with jokes! There are some great jokes. But there are quite a few tears.”

Gatiss confirmed that they were two weeks from finishing filming the season.

“We have to fly back tonight,” he said. “Benedict and I have an enormous scene [to shoot] on Tuesday morning.”

“There’s about 26 pages of dialogue that we’re doing next week. It’ll be very interesting,” commented Cumberbatch.

As is now tradition, they also revealed three words as clues to the season’s episode titles. You can see those below the trailer:

 
 
 
 

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