Sherlock TV showrunner Steven Moffat. Photo: © BBC/Andy Mosse.

Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain. The Sherlock TV series will not be cancelled by BBC One and PBS. Still showrunner Steven Moffat, who created Sherlock with Mark Gatiss (Mycroft Holmes), says it is possible the upcoming fourth season may be Sherlock‘s last. The Telegraph reports Moffat said star Benedict Cumberbatch is in such high demand that he has probably continued to make new seasons of the Sherlock TV show out of loyalty to fans.

The Telegraph quotes Moffat as saying, “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.” Cumberbatch is not the only Sherlock star with a white-hot career. Martin Freeman (Dr. John Watson) is currently filming the first season of his StartUp TV show with Adam Brody, for Crackle. The Captain America: Civil War alum also has four feature films currently in pre-production: Official Secrets, Funny Cow, Cargo, and Ghost Stories.

This lines up with how we parsed the press release, announcing shooting had begun on Sherlock, season four. That announcement quoted Moffat and Gatiss as saying: “This is the story we’ve been telling from the beginning. A story about to reach its climax,” (emphasis ours). When we first reported it we wondered if we should deduce the fourth season finale would also be Sherlock TV series finale.

Here is more from The Telegraph:

Moffat, who is also in charge of Doctor Who, said the shows would not be based on any of Conan Doyle’s best known detective stories. He said: ‘There are stories that we are making use of in different ways. We’re using stories that people don’t know so much. Now we are getting into equally good, but far less well known, Conan Doyle stories’.

The producer said that both Freeman, who starred in the Hobbit films, and Cumberbatch, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, did not do the show for the money.

He added: ‘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’.

‘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 said that if the pair’s schedule became too hectic to commit to future series, the corporation could return to the show years down the line.

He added: ‘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’.

The BBC has made a habit out of keeping Sherlock fans guessing about which of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories it will adapt for the screen.

 

Sherlock TV show co-creator, Mark Gatiss (BBC).

What do you think? Do you expect to get more seasons of the Sherlock TV series, or will the fourth season be the last — at least for a few years?