Review: Holmes and Watson get back to detecting as ‘Sherlock’ returns to PBS’ ‘Masterpiece’

Life has been busy for the stars of “Sherlock” since the series premiered in 2010, with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss applying new London style and contemporary quirks to Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective. Its fourth season — there have been breaks — begins Sunday on PBS’ “Masterpiece: Mystery!” Martin Freeman, the series’ Dr. John Watson, has gone from a guy you might have seen on the British version of “The Office” or in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” to playing Bilbo Baggins in three “Hobbit” movies and the hapless Lester Nygaard in the first season of FX’s “Fargo,” and hosting “Saturday Night Live.” Benedict Cumberbatch, its Sherlock has, among other things, played Khan in “Star Trek Into Darkness,” the title role in “Doctor Strange,” codebreaker Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game” and Richard III in BBC’s “The Hollow Crown” Shakespeare cycle; sung “Comfortably Numb” with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall; and has become something of an international, official hot guy. Directed by Rachel Talalay and written by Gatiss — who also plays Mycroft Holmes — the new episode belatedly picks up on the heels of last January’s “The Abominable Bride,” a Victorian-era dream interlude that in turn picked up on the heels of the third season finale, “His Last Vow,” which premiered two years earlier. To further confound time, “Bride” takes place in the last minutes of “Vow,” as Sherlock, flying off into exile, is recalled to England when the face of the supposedly late Professor Moriarty appears on television screens all over England over the title “Did you miss me?” Sherlock’s aborted exile followed his killing of a blackmailing newspaper publisher — “I’m not a hero,” he announced, then “I’m a high-functioning sociopath” — and it gives away nothing to say that this problem is quickly dispensed with in Sunday’s episode in order for our heroes to get on with new business, solving a string of cases in montage, while waiting for Moriarty to strike.