After another excruciatingly long wait, Sherlock is finally coming back for a special episode later this year, and we now know a bit more about what the plot will be.
According to Wired, showrunner Steven Moffat revealed at the Television Critics Association press tour that the upcoming Sherlock special will be a ghost story. The new episode jumps back in time to tell a standalone, noncanonical story set in Victorian London, and Moffat noted that this time period made a scarier plot appropriate.
"The main difference I would say, the only temperature change moving it to Victorian from Modern is ghost stories work better in the Victorian setting," he said. "Doyle stories that are scary chillers we haven't done much. Victorian era gives us a chance to do a creepy one; a scary one."
So will the characters be any different in this time period? According to Moffat, Sherlock will be a bit less rude than he is in modern times, and he'll have the manners of a Victorian gentlemen. "He's less brattish," Moffat added.
The episode was always pitched as a Christmas special, and it looks like they're still aiming for a December release, but Moffat said that they aren't actually certain of that. "It's probably Christmas-ish," he said. "We don’t actually know."
Unfortunately for Sherlock fans, we can look forward to another long break after this special, as Series 4 hasn't yet started filming. Moffat said at the TCA that they plan to shoot next year, meaning we can probably expect a 2017 release date if we're lucky. This show is notorious for the massive amount of time between episodes, mainly due to the crazy schedule of both Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and it seems like that won't be going away anytime soon.
For more on the upcoming Sherlock special, check out the teaser clip released last month from the BBC.
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