Australians Can Watch BBC's 'Sherlock' Special Episode Via Stan Soon...ish [VIDEO]

"Sherlock" distributor BBC Worldwide signed a deal with Stan owners Nine and Fairfax Media to grant special streaming rights of the UK series' special episode in Australia. Aside from exclusive livestreams, fans of the show outside of the United Kingdom can watch the episode in selected cinemas worldwide.

The arrangement was announced during the "Sherlock" panel in Comic-Con San Diego on Friday. Actors benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, who play Sherlock Holmes and John Watson respectively, were not present during the event, although writer/producer Steven Moffat, his wife and series producer Sue Vertue and actor Rupert Graves (who plays Detective Greg Lestrade) were in attendance. The stand-alone episode is set in the Victorian era, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original timeline for the detective series.

A teaser of the one-episode special was also shown during the convention. When asked where they got the idea for the episode, Moffat deadpanned and said, “Well, we discovered there was some precedent for doing Sherlock Holmes in the Victorian era. We got a look at the books and we realised, ‘God we got it wrong. It’s not supposed to be modern at all!’”

He recalled the questions the press asked him before the first episode of the series was aired: How can Sherlock Holmes exist in a world with an iPhone? When the press came for the interview of the special, their question was: How can Sherlock go on without his iPhone?

He answered that the transition of the original Conan Doyle story into a modern timeline, making it their own in a sense, and then back into the original timeline will show the very same Sherlock Holmes they created, only in a different period. Moffat said the special will still retain its original humour and it will be “Sherlock as you know it, but in the correct era.”

Staunch fans apparently found the idea exhilarating and have expressed their sentiments to Moffat and co-writer Mark Gatiss. He joked how Vertue had to talk them out of keeping the Sherlock storyline in the 1830s to 1900s.

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