Doctor Who writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are teaming up with Moffat’s wife Sue Vertue to bring Sherlock Holmes into the 21st century for a new BBC One drama.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson, Sherlock is a 60 minute drama set in present day London. They’ll be joined by Rupert Graves as Inspector Lestrade.
Although the show is set in 2009, the writers promise the iconic details of the Holmes books will remain. According to Moffat: “Everything that matters about Holmes and Watson is the same, Conan Doyle’s original stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they’re about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes.”
The drama is being produced by Hartswood Films, the company behind a string past BBC hits including Coupling, Men Behaving Badly and Jekyll.
Moffat says he and Gatiss “have been talking about this project for years, on long train rides to Cardiff for Doctor Who” but says it would never have got to the screen “if Sue Vertue of Hartswood Films (conveniently, also my wife) hadn’t sat us down for lunch and got us to work.”
Vertue says: “Steven and Mark are such huge fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories that I had a feeling they really would just go on and on talking about it, so I picked The Criterion for our lunch as I knew of its iconic significance in the meeting of Sherlock and Watson and thought it might get the boys attention!”
Gatiss says Cumberbatch and Freeman will be “the perfect Holmes and Watson for our time.
The 1 x 60-minute episode, written by Moffat, will shoot in January 2009 and will be directed by Coky Giedroyc.
Piers Wenger, Head of Drama, BBC Wales, says: “Our Sherlock is a dynamic superhero in a modern world, an arrogant, genius sleuth driven by a desire to prove himself cleverer than the perpetrator and the police, everyone in fact.”