‘Sherlock’ to premiere in Britain just 18 days before U.S. debut

Stateside “Sherlock� fans wary of Season 3 spoilers would be well-advised to steer clear of Twitter on New Year’s Day: That’s when Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s modern-day take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation will make its long-awaited return to television in Britain with an episode called “The Empty Hearse,� the BBC announced Friday.

The broadcaster touted the news Friday in London with a black hearse decorated with flowers arranged to spell the name “Sherlock� and hashtag in the driver’s window reading “#SherlockLives.�

The show will have its U.S. premiere on PBS on Jan. 19, more than 19 months after the second season finale, “The Reichenbach Fall,� in which Benedict Cumberbatch’s surly detective seemingly plummeted to his death from the roof of a hospital as his pal, Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman) looked on in horror.

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The 18-day lag between the British and U.S. broadcasts of “The Empty Hearse� may be too much for some fans to bear, but it’s at least an improvement on Season 2, when American “Sherlock� fans had to avert their eyes from the Internet for four agonizing months. Series star Cumberbatch has been vocal about his desire for the shows to run concurrently -- “it seems churlish, really, to deny savvy ‘Sherlock’ fans� he told the Times earlier this year -- and if he hasn’t quite gotten his wish, it seems the actor’s pleas have not fallen on deaf ears.

As for how his character might have cheated death, a trailer released earlier this week doesn’t give away many clues about what’s ahead except that -- spoiler alert -- Sherlock is still alive and Watson is sporting a mustache so bushy it puts Dennis Franz to shame.

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