Yes, it’s true. All the versions you can purchase or stream are the original BBC version.
There’s a misconception among a lot of casuals that Sherlock is aired in the US on BBC America. That’s not the case. PBS, the US station which airs Sherlock as part of its Masterpiece Mystery series, is partially publicly funded, and “family friendly.” It produces/broadcasts wholesome and/or brainy shows like Sesame Street, Antiques Roadshow (US), Ken Burns documentaries, classical and country music concerts, horrors like Celtic Women, and LOTS of nature programs. They also air LOTS of UK dramas like Downtown Abbey, Endeavor and the like. To their credit they did cut exponentially less of Series Three, but yes– there are substantial differences between Series One and Two as PBS/Masterpiece broadcast them versus the BBC originals.
Now. Not only did PBS/Masterpiece heavily cut Sherlock S1 and S2– they aired the episodes MONTHS after the BBC. And in the case of TEH– a few days later.
MasterpieceMystery and Sherlock Co-Producer Rebecca Eaton
The US cuts weren’t done primarily for commercials. PBS shows have very few sponsored ads (mainly from charitable foundations and Viking Riverboat Cruises!) Those spots appear at the close of episodes. The main reasons for the cuts were that:
Masterpiece Mystery traditionally has a shorter runtime than BBC dramas.
Masterpiece has charming, but long opening credits animated by Edward Gorey. (see below)
They have VERY annoying looooong insipid introductions for all theirepisodes by a host that old timey viewers love to love AND hate. (see below)
This ^ is ultimately the primary reason Masterpiece/PBS stopped hacking up Sherlock. They were losing massive money (despite what she claims above) in the US due to the fact that the Sherlock audience is decades younger than traditional Masterpiece viewers, and we know a thing or two about VPNs, BBC iPlayer, and Mediafire. (Jesus lady, get with the times already!)
Also Sue, Moffat, Benedict, etc. all put much public pressure on Eaton (especially when asked about the cuts and the delay by fans at cons and public appearances) to stop the madness and air the original simultaneously with the BBC.
Yes, but what about the @#$% cuts?!
The cuts were made willingly by Hartswood so they weren’t *total* hack jobs, but I can tell you that they made a huge difference story wise. I didn’t know there were cuts when I first watched Series Two in the US. (And this is why I watched TEH on the friggin iPlayer buffering 30 seconds at a time!) In TRF, for example, they cut, among other things, a key bit of Sherlock’s and Molly’s scene before the Fall. In fact TEH (and “you were the one person who mattered the most”) wouldn’t make much sense if you had only seen the PBS cut.
Here’s a link to a blog that compares all the PBS/Masterpiece cuts from Series One and Two to the BBC originals:
It would be quite the meta for somebody to talk about how the cuts changed the stories and headcanons– especially since they were “officially” (though reluctantly) done by the late Charlie Phillips (I’m not sure if Tim Porter, who edited TRF did the PBS/Masterpiece edits for that ep, or if Phillips did them all.) Here is Charlie talking about the edits
from “Reimagining a Classic with Editor Charlie Phillips” in Cinema Editor By Adrian Pennington
Now that’s kind of true– there were, however a few words/phrases of S3 that were altered. For the youth, you know…
And there you have it. This is why we all tuned into the BBC iPlayer for S3 early (to get access to the stream so we wouldn’t be blocked out from overwhelmed servers which we were anyway) and why we watched the BBC’s DEADLY BORING version of Antiques Roadshow which aired just before TEH in the UK.
The cuts and the delay are a HUGE HUGE part of Sherlock fandom history that you wouldn’t know about if you came in after Three.
