Calling all Sherlock fans: New Year's will also mark the premiere of season four

If you are hunting for clues about when the fourth season of Sherlock will debut; you can stop looking: BBC has just announced that the much anticipated Sherlock season 4 will premiere on 1 January 2017.

Sherlock will return in The Six Thatchers on January 1, 2017. #Sherlock pic.twitter.com/9QT9vhPGLe

— BBC One (@BBCOne) October 26, 2016

It had been delayed thanks to the ever growing popularity of Benedict Cumberbatch, but things seem to finally be near completion. The episode titles for the first two episodes were already released, and include The Six Thatchers (Episode 1) and The Lying Detective (Episode 2).

According to Dr John H Watson’s personal blog (an official spin-off site hosted by BBC), there is a peripheral entry titled ‘The Six Thatchers’. According to John, the case takes place when they were approach by a student named Sally Barnicot who asks them investigate the murder of her best friend Pietro Venucci who had been found stabbed at their university’s pottery room. His boyfriend Beppo Rovito was discovered at the scene, but there was no evidence to connect him to crime. However, Sally was convinced that Beppo had killed Venucci in a fit of uncontrollable anger. And, rather unsurprisingly, Sherlock deduces what happened well before he and John had bid Sally goodbye. As for ‘The Lying Detective,’ the episode will reportedly be loosely based off one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous stories, ‘The Adventure of the Dying Detective.’ This short story sees Sherlock fake a terminal illness to coerce a guilty confession from an unhinged murdered. With two months to go for the debut of the fourth season, we can hardly wait.