‘Sherlock’ season 4 premiere ratings top ‘The Abominable Bride,’ but fall versus season 3

For the season 4 premiere of “Sherlock” on PBS, the best way to describe the ratings as “great, but not necessarily spectacular.”

Per PBS, this first episode — which featured one of the saddest deaths in the whole history of the series — ended up drawing in total 3.7 million viewers. While this does mark an increase from the recent special “The Abominable Bride” from last year, it is also a drop from the 4 million people roughly who chose to watch the start of season 3 with “The Empty Hearse,” where Sherlock Holmes made it very clear that he was still among the living.

Is there anything to take away from these ratings? Given that this first episode dropped on New Year’s Day, a time in which not everyone is around in order to watch new episodes of some of their favorite shows, we consider this to be a victory. Also, remember, that it was three years ago when “The Empty Hearse” first aired, so the fact that the show dropped less than 10% in the age of DVR / streaming is remarkable. If you look at most broadcast shows this year, you’re going to see the majority of them with declines of 15% or so, and that is just versus one year ago.

The next new episode of “Sherlock” is coming this weekend, and we’ll see what happens when Culverton Smith, arguably one of the most notorious villains Sherlock has seen to date, arrives on the scene. You can see a teaser promo for it over at the link here; while it may not reveal much, it does offer you further reasons for excitement.

Is there anything in which you take away from some of these ratings? Be sure to share now in the attached comments! More news will be revealed once it is available. (Photo: BBC One.)