The wait for series three is upsetting, but not long now! (Picture: PBS-Hartswood Films for the BBC)

…or rather, the fact that the broadcast date for Sherlock series three isn’t a mystery at all, as it technically doesn’t exist yet.

For obvious reasons, it’s the question we’re asked most across our social media accounts – ‘When is Sherlock series three airing?’ And at the moment, we simply have to say ‘We don’t know yet‘. It’s not ignorance though; it’s genuinely because there is no date yet and here’s why.

There’s a marked difference between many UK and US shows, in that the UK generally doesn’t schedule television long in advance. Of course, a huge glaring exception to that rule is the upcoming 50th Anniversary Special of Doctor Who on November 23 2013, but that’s a show that simply cannot miss that airdate. Airing a special episode to mark five decades on air, on the day and date that show first aired? How could you not go for that?



With Sherlock though, everything to do with the schedule follows the standard pattern of UK broadcasts. Like every original production produced either by or for the BBC, the corporation won’t schedule any exact air-date months in advance, but only when the finished episodes are delivered to them.


This is, of course, different from the US, in that a series premiere is set months in advance and then the show either runs straight through (if you’re a cable show) or in increments as episodes are completed (if you’re a network show). Often in both cases, the premiere episode airs while the later episodes are still either filming or deep in post-production. Incidentally, the BBC recently tried this model with the split airing of Doctor Who series seven.

Post-production will still be on-going for Sherlock until way into November.

For Sherlock, with just three episodes per series, this isn’t really an option, so the BBC prefers to take delivery of the entire series in a single package and then lock down a date and release it to the media.

Don’t believe the airdates you’ve see floating around…they’re wrong! (Picture: PBS-Hartswood Films for the BBC)

Of course that’s not to say dates aren’t floating around out there.

Thanks to the Internet Movie Database, the most popular is October 31 2013, which is definite no-no. We know for a fact that post-production will still be on-going for Sherlock until way into November, which also counts out the second most popular rumoured date of November 24 2013 (which would of course be wonderful, a one-two-Who punch for Team Moffat and Gatiss across a single weekend).

Both dates have been consistently denied by the production team on Twitter, with both Mark Gatiss and Sue Vertue shooting them down for the past few months. So for a little while longer, that air-date has to remain a mystery.

But while we never speculate, we’d put the smart money on Sherlock series three debuting in a few months time, and not, sadly, in a few weeks as some websites may have you believe.