'Sherlock' season 3 premiere date revealed

The world’s biggest premiere date mystery has been solved.

Sherlock will return on January 19 at 10 p.m. That means the show will air back-to-back for the first time with that other hugely popular and influential Brit import, Downton Abbey (which returns January 5).

This marks the first time the mystery-thriller’s U.S. air date has been announced before the BBC reveals its UK premiere date (the BBC has the “first window” rights to air the show, so UK fans can at least take heart in knowing they will almost certainly get season 3 sometime before January 19). As told in the previous paragraph, they also announced Sherlock will be back-to-back with Downton Abbey, on which Beth Hoppe, PBS Chief Programming Executive and General Manager of General Audience Programming says, “The pairing of Downton Abbey and Sherlock in January offers a blockbuster night of British drama only on PBS stations.”

Sherlock season three production was delayed partly due to skyrocketing demand for its two stars, with Cumberbatch landing roles in Star Trek and several other films, while Freeman snagged the lead of Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit films (in which Cumberbatch also plays a small but pivotal role, as the voice of the dragon Smaug in December’s second film in the trilogy — which ought to make the climactic Bilbo-Smaug confrontation rather surreal for Sherlock fans). Sherlock season three production was then split into three chunks over the course of this year rather than being shot continuously like on most shows..

The first episode is called “The Empty Hearse” and solves the mystery of Sherlock’s death. The second episode is titled “The Sign of Three” and the third episode is “The Last Vow” and airs February 2. And then the wait for new Sherlock will begin all over again. Season 4 is heavily presumed to be happening, but the BBC has not confirmed this and the company tends to wait until each season of Sherlock airs until announcing the next.