Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have signed on for a fourth season of the BBC1/PBS Masterpiece drama Sherlock, which started its Season 3 table read yesterday ahead of shooting next week. Cumberbatch, who earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for playing a modern-day, tech-savvy Sherlock Holmes alongside Freeman’s Watson, told the UK’s Radio Times today the pair has agreed to do two seasons after Season 2, which aired on PBS in the U.S. in May. “We’ve agreed to two more series but I could get into trouble for saying that,” Cumberbatch said during the South Bank Show Awards today in London. “All I know at the moment is I’m doing these three [episodes of the upcoming series] and another three.” He also said he and Freeman would like to do more seasons but it depends on their increasingly busy schedules as well as the schedule of co-creator Steven Moffat, who also runs the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Sherlock last aired in the UK in January 2012. It was originally due to begin filming Season 3 this past January, but again the stars’ busy schedules delayed the start. Cumberbatch was in Germany shooting Wikileaks movie The Fifth Estate in January and Freeman stars in The Hobbit trilogy — in which Cumberbatch also stars. Now Season 3 will air in the winter in the U.S.