Benedict Cumberbatch has swapped his role as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes for the part of a repressed civil servant, and seemingly made a dig at Downton Abbey in the process.
Speaking about his new role in the BBC’s forthcoming rival to ITV's hit period drama, Parade’s End, Cumberbatch told The Sun: "We’re not serving purposes to make some clichéd comment about, ‘Oh, isn’t it awful the way there’s this upstairs-downstairs divide?' It’s a little bit more sophisticated.”
Cumberbatch, who will star in the World War One BBC/HBO mini-series when it starts on BBC2 soon, has, however, been kinder to US Sherlock Jonny Lee Miller...
Miller, who is set to play an American Sherlock Holmes in CBS drama Elementary, recently revealed there's no rivalry between him and Cumberbatch.
He told reporters at Comic Con: "I wanted to assure him that it was a different enough project."
And he explained: "[Cumberbatch] was excited for me and he was very encouraging and we discussed it."
Although becoming somewhat the poster boy for 'sophisticated' dramas, Cumberbatch is not afraid to try comedy too, with recent reports that he had voiced a character in long-running hit US cartoon The Simpsons.