British actors Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch have played best friends on Sherlock for over six years but behind the camera there is allegedly no love lost between the pair.
Co-creator Steven Moffat has already said the future of the show depends on the two actors’ busy Hollywood schedules and their willingness to return, but that is starting to look like a long shot.
The news comes as the series four finale pulled in the show’s lowest-ever audience with a peak of 6.2million in the UK on Sunday. A source said: “Benedict and Martin aren’t mates and they don’t spend time together away from the show.”
“Now that their careers have taken off – both have become Hollywood stars with Benedict recently taking on the lead role in Marvel’s Dr Strange – neither Benedict nor Martin have ‘a huge desire to come back for another season’.
“They’re professional and very polite to each other but there’s not the warmth you’d expect after filming together for six years,” the source told The Sun.
And it was a feeling that fans of the show also had when they watched The Final Problem on Sunday night after the episode ended with a sense of finality, as the late Mary Watson was heard on tape giving an emotional speech in which she referred to the pair as ‘my Baker Street boys’.
Questions continue to be raised over the future of the program, given concerns over the film stars’ continued availability; Cumberbatch has several movie projects in the works, while The Hobbit star Freeman is committed to several other projects, including forthcoming superhero film Black Panther.
Another “well-placed BBC source” told Radio Times that there would not be another series of Sherlock next January, while adding that the broadcaster is “reasonably hopeful” the programme will return for 2018.
If it is the end, the finale to the fourth season ended in such a way as to tie up any loose ends , with Moffat recently adding: “We could end it there.
“We couldn’t have ended it on any of the previous [seasons] because they’re all ended on walloping, great cliffhangers.”
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