It's been over two years since the second season of Sherwood aired, with a third season having been long-teased. Now, finally, we have a sense of when it will air.
Speaking on the launch episode of Sky News podcast Backstory with Cathy Newman, the drama's creator, James Graham said of Sherwood season 3: "We've finished it, we've edited it, and it will be the last series, and it will be out in January, February time."
While fans will no doubt be thrilled to hear that the new episodes are mere months away, Graham's news that season 3 will be the last puts a bittersweet note on it.
Filming on season 3 began at the start of the year, with new cast members including Rosalie Craig (Riot Women), Joe Dempsie (The Capture), Kirby Howell-Baptiste (The Sandman), Sue Johnston (The Royle Family), Peter Wight (A Confession), Ben Batt (Toxic Town) and Adam Long (The Day of the Jackal).
Beyond the world of Sherwood, Graham is next hoping to adapt his play Punch for television. Based on the non-fiction book Right from Wrong by Jacob Dunne, the play depicts the story of a man whose one punch has fatal consequences.
"I did a play called , which was on in the West End and went to Broadway. I'm hoping to turn that into television," he added.
"That was about the experience of going out on a Saturday night in these kind of market towns and cities, where the rhythm of life means that there is often a crucial moment in the night where drinking and a culture meets and it can often end in violence. And in this case, it ended up with a guy, James Hodgkinson, being killed with a one-punch killing outside Yates's Wine Lodge.
"And we wanted to understand the things I still know from that environment about masculinity and drinking and expressions of yourself, which if you don't have an emotional outlet, does it come out physically violently instead?"
In May, while speaking with us exclusively for our video interview series The Radio Times Writers' Room about his career thus far and his series, Dear England, Graham teased what fans can expect from season 3.
He said: "Like every series, we have a brand new family that I put through a brand new trauma, and we really put these guys through the wringer, but it's very exciting, led by Rosalie Craig, who was just in Riot Women, Joe Dempsie, who people remember from Skins, but like great Nottingham actors to tell a Nottinghamshire story."
Actors who are returning to their roles for the show's final season include David Morrissey, Lorraine Ashbourne, Lesley Manville, Claire Rushbrook, Perry Fitzpatrick, Bill Jones, Robert Lindsay, Lindsay Duncan and Robert Glenister
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The season will be set six months on from the end of the last run, and will focus on the Woods family, who are working-class, respectable pillars of the community, who volunteer at the local church.
Sherwood season 3 will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on iPlayer now.
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