Secrecy shrouds Sherlock’s return to PBS
LONDON — There’s something rotten in Baker Street.
It may just be the diaper of baby Rosamund Watson, whose arrival at the start of Sherlock’s fourth season disrupts the relationship between brilliant, but demanding, detective Sherlock Holmes and his long-suffering friend, Dr. John Watson.
The offspring of John and his enigmatic wife Mary is one of the few things program makers are willing to reveal before the first of three new episodes airs Jan. 1 on PBS.
Fears of domestic coziness are quickly banished in the opening episode. The new episodes pick up where the previous season left off almost three years ago. Since then, fans have had to make do with a one-time special last year that took the characters back to their Victorian roots.
Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Holmes, and Watson (Martin Freeman) are in huge demand, and Sherlock must fit around their other projects.
Cumberbatch jumped back into Holmes’ deerstalker hat right after finishing work on the Marvel adventure Doctor Strange.
While everyone involved in Sherlock is sworn to secrecy about the plot, Cumberbatch offers that it finds the great detective “at the top of his game, at the very bottom of his soul.”
He says viewers will see Sherlock facing crises both personal and professional. “It would be very dull if he was permanently a kind of impregnable hero who was always right,” Cumberbatch said.
There’s also a pivotal role for Mary, played by Amanda Abbington, whose secret past as a highly trained assassin was revealed in season three.
“I like the idea of her not being there forever,” said Abbington. “She wasn’t (there forever) in the books, so I don’t think she should be in this. It’s about Sherlock and John, and it should be about them. I don’t want her to become the third wheel.”