Sherlock: Will the Detective and his Boswell leave us after season 4?

Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman have become an integral part of lives of geeks and nerds and fans who follow the cult show. Shooting for season 4 is underway. But'this is it' is the signal coming from the showrunner Steven Moffat.

Talking to The Telegraph UK, Moffat said that Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch come back to the show out of loyalty to their fans. They do not need the money BBC's most sold programme makes when it is compared to what they make by doing Hollywood blockbusters like Hobbit Trilogy or Marvel movies.

"I’m amazed that we’ve got this far. I thought that once they had become extremely successful, we would only get to do one more series.

"There’s never going to come a time when we do a longer run, because this is what the series has become. It’s an occasional treat where you get three movies. It’s how it works," said Moffat 

Moffat also said that they are not short of stories to work with. It's the busy schedule of Freeman and Cumberbatch, who is nominated for 2016 Emmys for his role in The Abominable Bride, may cause the show to go on an even longer hiatus than what fans are accustomed to.

When asked about the upcoming season, expected to come out in early 2017, without revealing much, Moffat said that they are working on the lesser known stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. 

The showrunner along with writer and producer Mark Gatiss, Sue Vertue and Amanda Abbington who plays Mary Watson will be part of Sherlock panel at the San Diego Comic-Con at the end of this month.

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