To celebrate the upcoming screening of Sherlock series 2 on US television (beginning May 6th) the lovely people at PBS are running a couple of special Sherlock events that US fans can take part in.

First up for fans in Southern California PBS SoCal and the Art Theatre of Long Beach are holding a special 35 minute sneak peak of Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia on 28 April 2012 at 12:00 p.m. You can sign up for tickets here. Please note that signing up for a ticket doesn't guarantee you a seat and that it is highly recommended that you arrive early (check in will begin at 11:30 a.m.) If you are a PBS SoCal member you can obtain VIP passes for the event.

Then on May 2nd PBS is holding a very special Sherlock event in New York - an excerpt screening of Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia followed by a Q&A and autograph reception with Benedict Cumberbatch, producer Sue Vertue and co-creator and writer of Scandal Steven Moffat. 

There are 200 tickets in total available to the event and winners will be chosen by random draw. To be in with a chance of winning a pair of tickets send an e-mail to sherlock@pbs.org (25 pairs of tickets available) and ibelieveinsherlock@pbs.org (75 pairs of tickets available) including your name and the name of the guest you hope to take with you. 

Please note that whilst you can enter both competitions you can only win 1 pair of tickets. Also it is one entry per competition address per household - multiple entries to the competition addresses will be disregarded.Entries must be in by 24 April.

PBS have lots of amazing things lined up for their scheduling of Sherlock including live twitter chats during the episodes and live chats the day after so do keep an eye on their site for details.

In other news Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia has been nominated for 3 BAFTA Television Craft Awards. Steven Moffat has been nominated in the writing category, Charlie Phillips has been nominated in the editing: fiction category and the episode has been nominated for best sound. The awards are announced on Sunday 13th May. The nominations for the main tv awards are announced on 24 April 2012.

Sherlock has also been nominated for the BAFTA Youtube audience award - the award it infamously lost to The Only Way is Essex last year. Sherlock is nominated alongside Fresh Meat, The Great British Bake Off, Frozen Planet and Educating Essex. Fans can vote for the award (poll not yet up at the time of writing). The poll closes on 24 May 2012.