The long wait is over and the consulting rooms at 221B Baker Street are open again for business. “It hasn’t been that long,” Mark Gatiss, who created Sherlock with Steven Moffat, says over the phone from London. “There was The Abominable Bride last January,” Gatiss says, about the special which sees Sherlock back in Victorian times solving the grisly riddle of a bride who shoots herself and then apparently rises from the dead to commit murder.
“We wanted to make the special, special,” the 50-year-old writer and actor says. “It was an excuse to have Sherlock in two time frames in the same episode. The funny thing is, when we pitched the story to Benedict (Cumberbatch), five minutes into the narration, he asked ‘can I have my hair cut?’ He hates his curly hair you see.”
While Moffat and Gatiss have been credited with clearing the reverential fog that surrounds the famous detective — gaslight, mist, hansom cabs and all — there seems to be a danger of the series going into meta mode. Season 1 was bright, edgy and breathtakingly audacious. Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock made brainy the new sexy, with Martin Freeman making for an interesting Watson. Just when you thought the makers couldn’t top Season 1, came Season 2 which pushed the envelope in a variety of inventive ways. The only excitement in the underwhelming Season 3 was Watson’s marriage, which promised to pull the series out of the rut of crime-busting bromance.
However, the first episode of Season 4 has come in for flak for its treatment of the Mary Watson arc. “We thought it through very carefully,” Gatiss insists. “We didn’t get rid of the character just because it was convenient to do so.”
While the earlier seasons saw Sherlock trading his pipe for nicotine patches and no mention of his fondness for the seven per cent solution of cocaine, The Abominable Bride has Sherlock having drug-induced hallucinations. Will there be more drugs in the new season? “I cannot tell you that can I?” demands Gatiss. “Steve and I decided it would be darker. Sherlock is a recovering addict, there is a reason why his brother, Mycroft, watches over him.”
Following the tradition of naming the episodes after Doyle’s stories, the first episode of Season 4 is called The Six Thatchers based on Doyle’s The Adventure of the Six Napoleons . “It is one of Steven and my favourite stories,” says Gatiss, who plays Mycroft. “It is a classic Holmes story where a seemingly trivial but unexplained event — smashing busts of Napoleon — leads to a bigger mystery.”
The second episode is called The Lying Detective (based on Doyle’s The Dying Detective ) and introduces the horrid Culverton Smith played by Toby Jones. The third episode is called The Final Problem , but wait a minute wasn’t the third episode of Season 2, The Reichenbach Fall based on The Final Problem ? “There are elements from the stories as always, but not from The Final Problem , because we have already done that. It is a good title, that’s why we are using it.”
Does the final in the title indicate that this will be the last season for the high-functioning sociopath? “I honestly have no idea. It is extremely difficult to get Benedict and Martin’s diaries to coincide. When you are making 90-minute episodes, there is the size and scale to be considered. Then it is difficult to put the characters through the wringer time and again. There is an argument to be made for not stretching it and handing over the keys of 221B Baker Street to someone else.”
To the criticism that Sherlock is not particularly likeable, Gatiss comments, “We were criticised for making Sherlock too human in the last season! Sherlock is not about two middle-aged men sitting by the fire. There is a knock on the door, a client comes with a problem and Sherlock solves it. Our version is a series about a detective, not a detective series. So yes, when we first meet Sherlock, he is unlikeable, Watson softens his edges. Also, he is allowed to be rude and arrogant because he does what we would like to do. I am sure it would be impossible to live with someone like Sherlock in real life, but that is the power of fiction.”
Sherlock Season 4 will air on AXN India from January 7, 2017, every Saturday at 8 p.m.
