Stephen Fry, who played the eccentric, but altogether superior butler Jeeves in the Granada production of Jeeves & Wooster, has signed on to play Sherlock Holmes’ more intelligent and lazier brother Mycroft in Sherlock 2, the sequel to Guy Ritchie’s 2009 Sherlock Holmes film, which starred Robert Downey, Jr, and Jude Law.

Ritchie (see “Sherlock Holmes Claims Another Comic Casualty”), Downey Jr., and Law will all be back for the sequel, which is slated for release on December 16th, 2011.  They will be joined by Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who starred in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mycroft, who was a mysterious behind-the-scenes government figure in the Conan Doyle stories, is described in the script for Sherlock 2 as “an agoraphobic oddball.”