The interesting Sherlock series 4 news continues. After comments from Freeman earlier this week about scrapped plans to shoot at the end of this year, the actor is now teasing a potential special episode.

The actor who plays Sherlock’s sidekick Watson on the hit BBC1 drama told Alan Carr for Friday’s episode of Chatty Man that Mark Gatiss has come up with a special episode which sounds like it will be separate from series 4.

“Mark Gatiss may beat me up, but there is an idea for this one-off special that’s such a good idea, and as I was listening to it I thought ‘we’ve just got to do this.’ And I don’t know when we are going to be able to do it, unfortunately.”

He continued, “It’s a fantastic, really mouth-watering idea. But I really don’t know when we are going to get to do it.”

Freeman made no comments about what exactly the special is about, but an idea for a one-off special makes a lot of sense. Consider: Cumberbatch and Freeman have busy schedules for the foreseeable future and don’t have time to film an entire series (three 90-minute episodes) anytime soon.

However, they may have time for one special which would take much less time to film and could help hold fans over until whenever the stars have time for series 4.

We’ll have to speculate over what Gatiss has in mind exactly. Could it have to do with Moriarty, who supposedly returned at the very end of the series 3 finale?

Thinking outside the box, could we get another look inside Sherlock’s mind palace which had its own segment during the series 3 finale and was one of our favorite moments of the episode?

Prior to the premiere of Sherlock series 3, a special Christmas episode was released online and followed the search for everyone’s favorite detective. Hopefully this new special that Gatiss has in mind employs Freeman and Cumberbatch (last year’s featured only the former).

Thanks to the Radio Times for the interview quote.