It's been more than two-and-a-half years since the most recent episode of Sherlock, and star Martin Freeman has given an update on the show's future.

Freeman, who plays Dr. Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes in the award-winning detective drama, suggested that the possibility of new episodes really depends on whether writer-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have more stories to tell.

“The way the story went, in the last series [season], felt like, if not a full stop, then certainly a semi-colon or an ellipses. It felt like a pause. It didn’t feel like something where we could just pop up the next year and go, ‘Hey, folks, we’re back.’ It felt a bit more momentous than that," Freeman told Collider.

Freeman then continued: "[It's] not final, necessarily, but the truth is that I don’t know because me and Ben don’t write it. I’m a huge believer in stopping doing something when you want to. If you’ve said what you want to say, get off the stage, and really have the guts to leave it. I don’t know if it’s more they want to say.”

However, Freeman then added, perhaps a little more encouragingly, that "I think we’d all be open" to new episodes "if it’s something really meaty and interesting."

"We couldn’t come back with something that was quite good," he said. "It would have to feel really, really special. It was that kind of show.”

So, watch this space, basically, and never say never. In the meantime, we do know for certain that Freeman will be returning to TV in Breeders, a new comedy series about the challenges of being a parent that's due to debut in 2020. Whet your appetite by seeing how Freeman reacts to being compared to a hedgehog in this classic clip from The Graham Norton Show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSPM4LxMhwM

Moffat and Gatiss, meanwhile, are working on their new series Dracula, starring Claes Bang.

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