'Sherwood' Adds Rosalie Craig, Joe Dempsie, Kirby Howell-Baptiste & More for Season 3
'Sherwood' Season 3 has begun filming in the U.K. with a brand new family at the center of the story.
The growing popularity of BritBox since the summer of 2024 has been one of the few success stories for the BBC in the last decade. It's also one of the few bright spots for British television streaming in America, as PBS struggles to find replacement funding with the end of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But my personal reason for loving that people seem to have discovered BritBox exists is that I can finally get y'all to watch Sherwood.
Lacy once referred to the adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford as "The Avengers of Period Drama," because it starred nearly every high-profile BBC actor working in the late aughts, teaming up to give us the best possible version of a beloved novel. Cranford isn't the only time that's happened – both Hollow Crown trilogies did the same in 2012 and 2016.
Sherwood is the first major BBC series of the 2020s to take that route, and with good reason. The show was created and written by award-winning playwright James Graham, one of the best in the business today. The series itself is also a brilliant political matryoshka: come for the dramatization of the biggest manhunt in the U.K., stay for the deep dive into how Thatcher's destruction of the miners' strike in the early 1980s still permeates the northern redwall towns where they occurred.
Season 1 was set in 2004, thirty years after the strike, loosely centered around the twin real-life murders in the area that occurred that year. Though billed as an anthology series, Season 2 stayed in the same town, jumping forward ten years to 2014, as gang wars over illegal drug distribution turn the village into a violent nightmare.
Season 3 will pick up in 2015 and, unlike Season 2, will shift the focus to a brand-new family. However, many of the old crowd are still living in the area, giving the new season a nice mix of familiar cast and new faces.
Here's the new season's synopsis:
Six months on, the third series of Sherwood sees a new family at its heart. The Wood family is the picture of working-class respectability – pillars of the community, volunteers at the local church, with Zoe Wood, in particular, a passionate campaigner for her town. Husband Alex Wood is overseeing construction of the new Gotham housing estate, which is being built in the shadows of Sherwood Forest, and where they live with their kids and Zoe’s parents, Irene and Eric Bostall, as the estate’s first residents.
Meanwhile, DI Zara Gill is leading the operation to identify the numerous human remains that were found in the reservoir during the recovery operation following Ann’s drowning. The trail leads to several missing people linked to the Bransons' criminal activities, but one specific discovery unexpectedly leads back to the Bostall family.
Forty years after he first went missing, the body of Arthur Bostall is unearthed from Nottingham’s ancient caves, and a series of unnerving questions begins to arise over who killed him and why. As the Wood and Bostall families are forced to look back, events in the present conspire to uncover more buried secrets for the family and the wider community alike.
Season 3 will see the return of series stars David Morrissey (The Missing), Lorraine Ashbourne (After the Flood), Lesley Manville (Moonflower Murders), Claire Rushbrook (Rivals), Perry Fitzpatrick (Line of Duty), Bill Jones (Say Nothing), and Robert Lindsay (McDonald & Dodds). It also brings back Lindsay Duncan (AfterLife) and Robert Glenister (A Thousand Blows), who sat out Season 2.
The new additions for Season 3 will include Rosalie Craig (Riot Women), Joe Dempsie (Get Millie Black), Kirby Howell-Baptiste (The Sandman), Sue Johnston (Downton Abbey), Peter Wight (A Confession), Ben Batt (Toxic Town), and Adam Long (Day of the Jackal).
Graham once again penned six episodes of Season 3, with Clio Barnard returning to direct, splitting helming duties with Jack Casey (Blue Lights). and executive produce alongside Juliette Howell, Tessa Ross, and Harriet Spencer for House Productions, and Jo McClellan for the BBC.
Filming for Sherwood Season 3 is currently underway in the U.K. The new season is expected to debut as part of the 2026-2027 TV season, on BBC One in the U.K. and BritBox in the U.S. Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming now.
