After his star turn in “Doctor Strange,” Benedict Cumberbatch returns to the small screen New Year’s Day, when the fourth season of “Sherlock” premieres on PBS. And if a trailer released Saturday is any indication, he’s in for an emotional rollercoaster.
Narrated by Toby Jones, who plays new villain Culverton Smith, the ominous teaser begins with a warning that “the roads we walk have demons’ beneath,” as Cumberbatch’s title character, Detective Sherlock Holmes, stares at a burning house, “and yours have been waiting for a very long time.”
The trailer then cuts to scenes of a heavily perspiring Cumberbatch with various intense, extremely anxious stares — and a shot of him getting shoved into a bathroom stall by a much shorter man. Jones asks “what’s the very worst thing you can do to your very best friends?” before appearing on screen to answer, “tell them your darkest secret.”
It concludes with Cumberbatch standing under apparent duress in a dark room with two men standing hovering him.
“I love you,” he says.
“Sherlock” is a British-American modern interpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories. Cumberbatch stars as Holmes, a consulting detective to Scotland Yard, and Martin Freeman plays his sidekick, Dr. John Watson.
