page_title: Benedict Cumberbatch
section_title: Television
hierarchical_section_title: Benedict Cumberbatch / Career / Television
caption_attribution_description: Chinatown, London. Benedict Cumberbatch during filming of Sherlock.
context_page_description: Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch CBE is an English actor. A graduate of the Victoria University of Manchester, he continued his training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, obtaining a Master of Arts in Classical Acting. He first performed at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in Shakespearean productions and made his West End debut in Richard Eyre's revival of Hedda Gabler in 2005. Since then, he has starred in the Royal National Theatre productions After the Dance and Frankenstein. In 2015, he played the title role in Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre.
  Cumberbatch's television work includes appearances in Silent Witness and Fortysomething before playing Stephen Hawking in the television film Hawking in 2004. He has starred as Sherlock Holmes in the series Sherlock since 2010. He has also headlined Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Parade's End, The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and Patrick Melrose. In film, Cumberbatch has starred in Amazing Grace as William Pitt the Younger, Star Trek Into Darkness as Khan, 12 Years a Slave as William Prince Ford, The Fifth Estate as Julian Assange, and The Imitation Game as Alan Turing. He also made a brief appearance in 1917.
context_section_description: Cumberbatch's early television roles include two separate guest roles in Heartbeat (2000, 2004), Freddy in Tipping the Velvet (2002), Edward Hand in Cambridge Spies (2003) and Rory in the ITV comedy drama series Fortysomething (2003). He also featured in Spooks and Silent Witness. In 2004, he landed his first main part in television as Stephen Hawking in Hawking. He was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor and won the Golden Nymph for Television Films – Best Performance by an Actor. He later provided Hawking's voice in the first episode of the television series Curiosity. He also appeared in the BBC miniseries Dunkirk as Lieutenant Jimmy Langley.
  In 2005, Cumberbatch portrayed protagonist Edmund Talbot in the miniseries To the Ends of the Earth, based on William Golding's trilogy; during filming he experienced a terrifying carjacking in South Africa, managing to escape. He made brief appearances in the comedy sketch show Broken News and the Channel 4 sitcom Nathan Barley in 2005 and featured alongside Tom Hardy in the television adaptation of Stuart: A Life Backwards, which aired on the BBC in September 2007.
  In 2008, Cumberbatch played the lead character in the BBC miniseries drama The Last Enemy, earning a Satellite Award nomination for Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Film. In 2009, he appeared in Marple: Murder Is Easy as Luke Fitzwilliam. He played Bernard in the TV adaptation of Small Island, earning him a nomination for BAFTA Television Award for Best Supporting Actor. Cumberbatch featured in Michael Dobbs' play, The Turning Point, which aired as one of a series of TV plays broadcast live on Sky Arts. The play depicted an October 1938 meeting between Soviet spy Guy Burgess, then a young man working for the BBC, and Winston Churchill. Cumberbatch portrayed Burgess; Churchill was played by Matthew Marsh, who had played a supporting role in Hawking. He narrated the 6-part series South Pacific (US title: Wild Pacific), which aired from May to June 2009 on BBC 2.
  In 2010, Cumberbatch portrayed Vincent van Gogh in Van Gogh: Painted with Words. The Telegraph called his performance "[a] treat ... vividly bringing Van Gogh to impassioned, blue-eyed life." In the same year, Cumberbatch began playing Sherlock Holmes in the joint BBC/PBS television series Sherlock, to critical acclaim. The second series began on New Year's Day 2012 in the United Kingdom and was broadcast on PBS in the United States in May 2012. The third series aired on PBS over a period of three weeks in January to February 2014. Cumberbatch won an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for the third episode of the third series of the show entitled His Last Vow. Cumberbatch unknowingly has one of the most aggressive fanbases to date, part of the 'Big Three' fandoms on the social media site Tumblr, called SuperWhoLock.  In April 2015, Cumberbatch was nominated for his sixth British Academy Television Award for Best Leading Actor for the third series of the Sherlock. In 2016, he was once again nominated for an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, this time for Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.
  In 2012, Cumberbatch led the BBC and HBO co-produced miniseries Parade's End with Rebecca Hall. An adaptation of the tetralogy of novels of the same name by Ford Madox Ford, it was filmed as five episodes, directed by Susanna White and adapted by Tom Stoppard. His performance earned Cumberbatch his second Emmy Award nomination for Best Actor in Miniseries or TV Movie. In February 2014, Cumberbatch appeared with Sesame Street characters Murray and Count von Count for PBS. In April that same year, it was announced that Cumberbatch would portray Richard III in Shakespeare's play of the same name in the second series of films for The Hollow Crown which aired in both Britain and the United States. Cumberbatch has also been a brand ambassador for Dunlop and Jaguar luxury cars since 2014.
  Cumberbatch was cast in February 2017 to star in Patrick Melrose, a miniseries adaptation of the Edward St Aubyn novels, which began airing on Showtime on 12 
caption: Filming Sherlock in Chinatown, London, March 2010. He portrayed the title character for 13 episodes between 2010 and 2017.
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