Entertainment

'Sherlock's Unconventional Premiere Announcement

by Alanna Bennett

When on Thursday Mark Gatiss — one of the current benevolent trickster gods of the Sherlock universe — tweeted that "should you be around Baker St, Gower St or even Bart's tomorrow morning, [you should] look out for a certain vehicle containing special news..." and hashtagged it Sherlock, fans didn't know quite what to expect other than "Ah!!! SOMETHING!". What we got was a hearse and a Sherlock UK premiere date of Jan. 1, 2014. All hail Gatiss.

The first episode of Sherlock's third season (or 'series' if you lean British) is called "The Empty Hearse" — after the Arthur Conan Doyle story "The Adventures of the Empty House". So it was fitting that BBC decided to (finally) announce the episode's premiere date via hearse. More specifically a hearse that drove around Sherlock Holmes-related bits of London (Baker St., obviously, as well as St. Barts Hospital) with the release date spelled out in its windows, along with the hashtag #sherlocklives.

So there we have it: Sherlock will return Jan. 1, 2014 — and it's a release date much more relevant to most of the show's viewers, because while Sherlock's PBS airdate is Jan. 19...well, the Internet exists and Sherlock fans are very passionate, so use your imagination.

You can see the marketing hearse yourself below:

Images: BBC/Twitter