"Sherlock" Season 4 is likely to begin production soon, which means the premiere episode will air earlier than expected. Mark Gatiss, co-creator of BBC's highly popular series "Sherlock," has said that they are inching closer to zeroing-in on the date for Season 4.

In an interview with RadioTimes.com, Gatiss said that they've "moved significantly closer to getting a date in the diary for series four."

At the Bafta TV ceremony, Gatiss confirmed that the team of "Sherlock" is "moving closer to agreeing dates." Den of Geek reports that the team is currently in the process of working out a production schedule for "Sherlock" Season 4, after considering the complicated schedules of actors, writers and everyone involved with the project.

"Benedict and Martin's schedule, Steven's schedule, my schedule, everybody's schedule -- it's like a jigsaw puzzle," Gatiss said, as quoted by Den of Geek.

Earlier, Martin Freeman had made the fans happy by saying that there is a possibility of a special "Sherlock" episode. Gatiss has poured cold water on this special episode. He said, "There was talk amongst people who have nothing to do with "Sherlock," I'm afraid."

Freeman had said on Alan Carr's chat show, "Mark Gatiss may beat me up, but there is an idea for this one-off special that's such a good idea, and as I was listening to it I thought 'we've just got to do this'. And I don't know when we are going to be able to do it, unfortunately."

Freeman had called it a "fantastic" and "really mouth-watering" idea. However, he had no clue about when they would be doing it.

It looks like Freeman and co will never do the special episode, but will soon begin shooting for the three episodes of Season 4.

Freeman had indicated that they originally planned to begin filming in autumn 2014. However, Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch were unavailable because of their busy movie schedules. Freeman is currently appearing in FX's anthology series "Fargo."