No Sherlock until 2016…unless Christmas comes early in 2015

On: July 2, 2014, By: Bill Young

While it is certainly something that most all of us probably already knew, it just makes it all the more difficult to grasp when you hear it directly from one of the co-creators. There is no joy in Mudville today as it’s looking more and more likely that the world’s greatest consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, will not return to the small screen with new episodes of Sherlock until 2016.

Difficult, yes, but totally understandable. Given the insane nature of the schedule availabilities of not only the principal characters, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, the brilliant supporting cast of Rupert Graves, Una Stubbs, Louise Brealey and Amanda Abbington, not to mention the 24/7 schedule for both Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, getting the stars to align for brilliant telly has become next to impossible.

Speaking at a fan Q&A forum in Brazil, series co-creator/writer Mark Gatiss spoke the unthinkable: “Writing three films is quite a lot of work and then getting everyone together… [it’s] increasingly difficult to get everyone’s diaries to align, so we couldn’t really do more than three every couple of years I’m afraid. I mean, we’d certainly like to reduce the time, but by the time we’ve finished and then everyone starts gearing up again, it roughly takes that long.”

Earlier comments from series co-star, Martin Freeman (John Watson), have long hinted at the same timetable citing the same difficulties of schedule availability. “It’s very hard to get together,” he told Digital Spy. “But it’s one of those things where you have to at some point just go, ‘We’re going to do it now’ – otherwise we could be having this conversation in three years.” While Freeman has recently hinted at the possibility of getting the band back together for a one-off Christmas special in 2015, we’ll just leave that for the time being as I’m not sure I can take the possibility of getting that OR the bike that I asked for.