While CBS has been busy as worker bees trying to get new Sherlock Holmes pilot Elementary to happen, even hiring Lucy Liu as a weirdo Watson for chrissakes, BBC’s Sherlock creator Steven Moffat is sitting back and keeping his fingers crossed that the U.S. version of Sherlock Holmes won’t tarnish the reputation of the brand.
One would think the bigger concern would be that Elementary will copycat Sherlock’s look and feel, but Moffat says it is not so.
“The bigger problem for us with Elementary is, what if it's terrible? What if it's awful? Then it degrades the brand. If there's this completely unrelated rogue version of Sherlock going around and it's bad, it can be bad for us.”
What Moffat is saying has a little validity to it, but it hardly seems fair to assume audiences on both sides of the pond will in any way stop watching Moffat’s Sherlock if Elementary turns out to suck, which it very well could. The bigger issue, it seems to me, would be if Elementary is awesome. Then, I could see potential U.S. fans of the Brit version of Sherlock ignoring the show entirely, due to the relative availability of CBS and the fact if the show goes to series, far more episodes of the American version will be produced.
Despite Moffat’s reservations about the series, he told BBC’s Newsbeat he in no way feels like legal action should happen, that is, as long as Elementary’s plotlines come straight from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and not from Moffat’s program.
"I hope they know their Sherlock Holmes very, very well indeed because we know what's in our show and wasn't in the original.”
Despite trying to seem nonchalant about CBS’ enterprise , Moffat has admitted he is a bit annoyed over the whole thing. At the end of the day Moffat’s Sherlock is phenomenal. Benedict Cumberbatch is the perfect casting for Holmes and each episode sucks you in, making 90 minutes feel like 20. I don’t think there is any way Elementary can top Moffat’s program, and he should be very proud of that. However, is there room out there for more Holmes stories to be told? Absolutely. If Elementary is any good, I don’t think Moffat can begrudge a show airing in a completely different country for a mostly different audience, although you can bet I for one, will be sticking with my imported Blu-Rays.
