Would be fantastic!

OH Now THAT would be lovely!

Sue & Steven have both said that this is unrealistic and won't happen. There are scheduling issues, plus the scripts haven't been written yet.

I think in order not to become hurt I will not believe anything before we get an official date... Christmas would be fantastic!! But if I have to wait til 2016, the way to survive that is to not get my hopes up too high...

^That is exactly my thought too! For me I got into Sherlock as a sort of 'stand in' for Doctor Who... (not that I ever left Doctor Who completely) but I see how it could happen...

They could at least make a Christmas special just to keep it fresh in memory and then wait a year... that would be wise if you ask me.

You know, at some point after series 2 had finished airing, I was getting a little fed up with the constant complaints on Tumblr of how fans would have to wait at least another year for series 3 to air. At which point I wrote up a long rant I posted on my Tumblr account, which I shall post below.

This is not aimed at any of you, because I think on this forum everyone is very understanding of the concept that a high quality TV show takes time to develop. But I think sometimes people in general are quick to complain because they're just not aware of the huge machinery that is involved in getting something from paper to screen.

Dear all,

It’s getting a tad old to read your constant complaints about how it will take until 2013 for series 3 of Sherlock to air. The creators of the show are not doing this  because they wish to annoy you. I’m quite sure the creators are not even doing it on purpose.Seeing how chances are good you are still in high school, you may not have any concept of what it takes to get a television show written, developped, financed, cast and ultimately produced. Putting a TV show on the air is a huge undertaking that takes time and a whole lot of money. We’re not talking about a few thousand pounds here. We’re talking about something in the six figures range, possibly more. Per episode.

Writing a TV show takes time. What do you think, the writers just sit down and write a whole script overnight? In scriptwriting, you roughly count one page as one minutes screen time. That means 90 pages alone for what’s ending up on the air. And don’t forget that there’s always drafts and cuts and editing and rewrites. Many, many pages of script are written before there’s a final version that’s used for shooting. Before you even get to that point, there are discussions to be held prior to even putting a word on the page. There’s ideas to be thrown around, concepts to be developped and story elements to be evaluated.

Scriptwriting is not just writing description and dialogue down chronologically until you have a 90-minute movie. There are structures to be adhered to, like dividing the script into different acts. This takes careful planning and a lot of brainstorming and discussion with the creative team you’re probably involving. And then you’re going to have to consider if what you’re writing can actually be shot. You want a bomb go off in one of the buildings in an elaborate explosion? Does your budget allow for grand-scale pyrotechnics and special effects? Possibly not, so you may have to rethink and rewrite.

Okay, now say you spent a good few weeks on talking among your creative team, and you’ve spent another few weeks writing your script. It’s been edited and ready to go. You’re going to have characters in your story that have not been introduced in previous episodes. These need to be portrayed by actors. So the casting process begins. This usually means many actors lining up for auditions. You evaluate and pick your actor you favour. You need background actors and extras. This takes more time.

Your actors also have to be available to shoot your movie. What do you think how long it takes to shoot a feature-length film? You’d be surprised, the amount of time that goes into shooting one scene. Something that’s only a minute on screen can take several hours to shoot, maybe even a whole day, depending on the complexity of what’s involved. I don’t know how long they’re taking to shoot a Sherlock episode, but I’d say several weeks at least. Why do you think they’re not shooting Sherlock series 3 until 2013? Martin Freeman is tied up with The Hobbit. Benedict Cumberbatch is doing the new Star Trek movie and other projects. Moffat and Gatiss can’t just snap their fingers, and the actors are there on their doorstep to shoot with them. Shooting schedules can be tricky. Not to mention that Moffat and Gatiss themselves are members of the Dr. Who writing staff, which they have to devote time to.

Now, where do you shoot your script? Interiors can be shot in the studio, and Sherlock already has most of the sets. This is not difficult at this point. But if you’re starting from scratch, you need to find someone who is going to build your sets and make them look right. Exterior shots: You need a location scout. People who drive around and find places that might match what you want to see on the screen. Interiors that are not filmed in the studio — these need to be found. There are permits to be obtained. You can’t just go out there with a production crew and start shooting whatever you want. There’s red tape to cut through. And a whole lot of logistics to plan. Production design, make-up, wardrobe, craft services, the whole shebang.

Okay, now you’ve got everything you need: The script, the actors, the locations, the logistics, the money. You go out and shoot your stuff, for several weeks, usually. Or months, depending on the project. You end up with a whole lot of raw film material. Also: News flash — movies and TV shows are usually not shot chronologically the way they air. If you’ve got five different scenes in Sherlock’s apartment at different time points throughout the whole episode, it makes sense to lump them all together during shooting so that you don’t have to shuffle back and forth between locations. But I digress…

Once you have all your hours upon hours of raw material, someone needs to sift through it and separate the useable bits from the worthless ones. It’s meticulous work for an editor to cut all this together into a final version. And then there’s the special effects and the sound editing. There’s the musical scoring. You’d be surprised just how tedious sound editing is.

I was lucky enough to once witness about an hour of sound editing for the US show ‘Bones’. So how does it work? There’s a darkened room with a huge screen on which the scene of the episode they’re working on is displayed. There’s two sound engineers working on it in parallel, both with two computer screens in front of them, a keyboard, mouse and a huge sound board with controls and keys and sliders. The engineers go bit by bit through the dialogue and adjust and fiddle and clean. Sometimes background noise is removed and replaced by other sounds. There’s a scene in the woods, so they add forest ambiance by putting in sounds of rustling leaves and birds chirping and a woodpecker hacking away in the distance. You wouldn’t believe how much of the ambient sound you hear is fake.

Maybe the dialogue needs to be cleaned up, so they run different filters for the different snippets of dialogue. Maybe some dialogue needed to be “looped” (also called ADR - Automated Dialogue Replacement), meaning only the audio was re-recorded afterwards and now needs to be inserted or overlaid into what was originally shot. Sometimes things just don’t sound right, so the editors go back and retry, and go back and retry with a different filter, and go back and retry again. We watched them work for about an hour, and in that hour, I estimate they finished something between five and ten minutes of the episode. You can imagine how long it takes to sound-edit a 90-minute episode. The experience of being able to witness the process of sound editing has taught me to really appreciate something you normally don’t even notice: the background noise.

All right, so then you’ve got your final cut with the right edits and all the right sounds and special effects and the score, so you’re ready to go. Then you give it to the network or (whoever you shot it for) and they see where they can best fit it in. Provided the network execs are happy with it (and if they aren’t, they may actually request changes), the network needs to find a good timeslot to air it where it will be estimated to get the highest possible number of viewers. In the movie industry, this actually involves more careful planning, with possible test screenings and early application for a release date, because the release date spots are regulated too (and of course you want to make sure you’re not going against a blockbuster with a similar premise that starts the same week).

So, dear fellow Sherlockians. Are you still surprised it’s going to take a whole year to create another three-episode series of Sherlock? Are you? And by the way, no amount of your whining about it will change the fact. Please, just deal with it and move on. In the meantime, read some of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels. Watch some of Cumberbatch’s or Freeman’s other shows or movies. Or rewatch the first two series of Sherlock on repeat. Write fan fiction. Create fanart. Talk to other fans. Write about the show.

Last but not least, please note that I have no affiliation with the BBC or Sherlock. I don’t even work in the entertainment industry. I’m just a fan like you. And, yes, of course I’d rather watch series 3 now rather than wait another year for it. But there is a time to complain, and there’s a time to be thankful we’re even getting a third series. I personally choose to go with the latter, and will be waiting with baited breath just to see how Messrs Moffat and Gatiss are going to resolve that riddle that’s had Sherlock fans all over the world come up with many crazy speculations.

Love,
me

Teejay, you made a really interesting and well informed post that makes a lot of sense.
And I'm honestly not complaining about the wait, as such.
But the more I think about it, the more risky I think it is to leave two years between each series.
This is a huge show for the BBC - probably one of their biggest, and I know it takes a lot of work and money to create each episode.
But viewers won't sustain such a high interest in a show that takes a two year hiatus after every three episodes indefinitely.
If I were heading up whichever department is in charge of it's output, I'd be doing all I could to get a deadline of around 12 months set for the next series, rather than 24.
And I know they like to cite the Actors schedules as reason for the long wait, but if you agree a filming date in advance with them then they're more likely to keep that period free.
As I say, this isn't a moan - I'd just hate viewers to fall away because the output is so sporadic,

They won't have any trouble getting viewers to watch, no matter how much time is in between each series.  The fact that the actors still want anything to do with the show when they could easily be making much more money in Hollywood is a rare treat for fans, so I'm grateful that there's even a 4th series on the horizon.  There's plenty of things to do in the meantime...other shows to watch, places to go, people to see...I'm not going to pine for something I can't have right now.

zeratul wrote:

I really hope, that at the point when there will be a last series, that there will be a nice end... It would be horrible if there would not be a series 4 at this point of story.

But how do you end a show like this?  There really could never be an 'end' unless they kill off the characters, which they wouldn't do.  Come to a stopping point, yes...but they can't 'end' it as much.

zeratul wrote:

sj4iy wrote:

zeratul wrote:

I really hope, that at the point when there will be a last series, that there will be a nice end... It would be horrible if there would not be a series 4 at this point of story.

But how do you end a show like this?  There really could never be an 'end' unless they kill off the characters, which they wouldn't do.  Come to a stopping point, yes...but they can't 'end' it as much.

well the end of episode 1 of series 3 would be a point where you could end without too many open questions

Well, that's my point.  They will probably never 'end' it, just leave it at a stopping point until they can make it again, whether that's 2 years or 10 years.