Martin Freeman: working with ex Amanda Abbington in Sherlock was ‘odd’

It’s been three years since the last season of Sherlock, but the series returns with the season four premiere on New Year’s Day.

Indeed, Mary’s demise was such an afterthought in his novels, Doyle never even gave a cause for it – a far less poetic end than Mary’s decision to sacrifice herself by jumping in front of a bullet to save Sherlock’s life, having previously tried to shoot him herself. For half an hour, Sherlock squabbled entertainingly with Mycroft and John and talked down to everyone else, Rosie included. The little Frenchman was name-checked as a figure from history to which Britain’s first female PM has now been consigned, but mainly Mrs T’s role was tantamount to a red herring. You saw what you wanted to see – what you expected to see.

Martin Freeman is back as Dr Watson. Let us know in the comments and how you’ll be watching. You fell for the red herring. Sherlock will need something to interrupt his melancholy and feelings of rejection after John refused to see him or speak with him. They love to pull the rug. “We’ve been apart a lot, and I think that’s one of the reasons it happened”, Digital Spy quoted Abbington as saying. She’s involved with Culverton somehow.

Viewers were divided about this evening’s comeback episode, but we suspect the always fantastic Jones could silence any doubters as a cackling and terrifying new foe for Holmes and Watson. But, there are whispers it could also be his estranged sister Harry. Ajay followed Sherlock, and therefore was able to be reunited with them. Then, there’s the fact that John is actually receptive to her advances, texting another woman while he lies in bed with his wife. Who knows if it’s true, but well done. Her death is merely fodder to advance Sherlock as a character and explore the new depths of bizarreness that is his relationship with John at the end of the episode.

According to Canuck Sherlock, it could be an actual town in Norway. At no point did it feel were we invited to solve a central mystery alongside our heroes. Hence the delightful scene in the London Aquarium in which Marcia Warren’s piffling little secretary was exposed as an unlikely criminal double agent. Mary’s dead, John’s a widower, and baby Rosamund is left a motherless child.

It was never made clear whether or not the search for Moriarity will begin again, all wrapped up in the Save John Watson campaign.

Also, Mary is definitely not dead, sorry.

Of course, it’s challenging to work with babies on set, but Cumberbatch praised the tikes: “The babies have been pretty wonderful, I’m a father and I know how hard it is to get anything in tune with a baby’s schedule”, who’s wife Sophie is now expecting their second child. “And [he] said it would either be something like that [scene that ended up in the episode] or being hit by a bus”, she recalled.

In the season 3 finale when she is “outed” regarding her false identity, the focus swiftly turns to John and his “attraction to danger”.

“It is sad and it is upsetting because you think you’re going to be with someone for ever, but you either do that or you break up”. The rollocking opening act sees Sherlock at the top of his game, practically solving cases in his sleep, which makes the juxtaposition of his uncertainty and guilt in the closing minutes all the more potent.

If you’d forgotten any of that, don’t worry – the show pretty much does, too. “But it was good fun to film and to work with these guys, because these guys are brilliant to work with”.

Ultimately, the episode was less interested in setting up detective mysteries than in telling a Jason Bourne-like story about Mary.