Although the hit drama last aired five years ago, Sherlock’s future could be a hopeful one after all.
Series creator Steven Moffat spoke about the popular programme while promoting his debut West End play The Unfriend on this morning’s BBC Today programme.
The former Doctor Who show runner, who revealed that he has “just started talking about” a second season of his recent BBC drama Inside Man, also said that he would “start writing Sherlock tomorrow” if Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman ever agreed to return for another season.
He joked: “They’re on to bigger and better things but, Martin and Benedict, please come back?”
The fourth and final season of Sherlock, which aired in 2017, concluded with The Final Problem, a gripping episode that saw Holmes (Cumberbatch) finally confront his evil sister and Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott) – but fans of the acclaimed detective series have been left wondering just when they can expect a new season to ever land on their screens.
Speaking in an exclusive interview at the Radio Times Covers Party, Moffat said he’d “do Sherlock again tomorrow, why ask me?”
He added: “Mark [Gatiss] would do it tomorrow, Sue [Vertue, producer] would do it tomorrow – we’d all just do it again. It’s down to Benedict and Martin.”
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Playing Holmes’s loyal friend John Watson, Freeman appeared on The Jonathan Ross Show in November 2022 where he admitted that he doesn’t know whether Sherlock will ever return to screens, but said “it’s never a completely shut door”.
He has most recently starred in The Responder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, while Cumberbatch was last seen on the big screen as Dr Stephen Strange in Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
As for now, fans of Moffat can see his play The Unfriend when it begins its run in London’s Criterion Theatre next week.
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