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Mark Gatiss has revealed that the fourth series of Sherlock is close to being shot.

Speaking on the red carpet of this year's BAFTA TV Awards, the show's co-creator Gatiss - who appears in the BBC One mystery series as Mycroft Holmes - said that the production date is nearly fixed with shooting dates close to being agreed.

"I can officially tell you that we are moving closer to agreeing some dates to shoot. If that sounds like a party line, it is," Mark told the Radio Times.

He added: "That is proper progress because Ben [Benedict Cumberbatch] and Martin [Freeman] are so busy and Stephen and myself are so busy, but actually trying to get everybody to interlock is - we have made significant progress."

Mark also dismissed rumours that Sherlock's next outing would be a one-off filming, telling Digital Spy that a full series is still 'the plan'.

(Image: BBC)

"There was talk [of a film] amongst people who have nothing to do with Sherlock I'm afraid," he added.

The writer previously revealed that it would be two years before the next installment of the series was released, meaning that Sherlock fans will have to wait until 2016 for new episodes.

Speaking at a fan Q&A session in Brazil in April, he said: "Writing three films is quite a lot of work and then getting everyone together… [it's] increasingly difficult to get everyone's diaries to align, so we couldn’t really do more than three every couple of years I’m afraid.

"I mean, we'd certainly like to reduce the time, but by the time we've finished and then everyone starts gearing up again, it roughly takes that long."

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