Co-creator of the wildly successful (and deservedly so) BBC Sherlock series, Steven Moffat has a few new things to say about CBS’ Elementary…
After CBS responded to the creators of the BBC’s Sherlock turning down their offer to create a US version of the show by getting to work on their own modernised version of Holmes, the risk was initially one of too much overlap between the two supposedly distinct properties. Now, it seems the pendulum’s swung the other way. The problem, according to Steven Moffat, isn’t that Elementary is too similar, but that it’s too different from the original Conan Doyle stories.
Speaking to TheInsider, Moffat explained, “What we did with our Sherlock was just take it from Victorian times into modern day. [Elementary] has got three big changes: it’s Sherlock Holmes in America, it’s Sherlock Holmes updated and it’s Sherlock Holmes with a female Watson. I wonder if he’s Sherlock Holmes in any sense other than he’s called Sherlock Holmes.”
It’s a fair point, especially when you consider that the US already has (or had, seeing as the series is just days away from its finale) a modern-day Sherlock Holmes in the form of House. Moffat continued, “It’s almost like they should have made Watson a woman but kept the show in Victorian times…that would actually be quite interesting.”
