Britishness key to Sherlock Holmes’s international appeal, Moffat says
Some sort of Sherlock Holmes adaptation is under way, Moffat and producer Sue Vertue said, but would not reveal any more information.
Sherlock Holmes’s Britishness is behind the series’ international success, Steven Moffat has said.
The BBC show’s co-creator, and producer Sue Vertue, also revealed at Comic-Con San Diego on Thursday that they are working on an adaptation – but remained tight-lipped as to what it was.
“I think it’s because it’s sort of the most overtly, obviously, amazingly British thing, it’s a British icon, that’s why it exports to other cultures,” he said.
“It’s not like people in Japan or people in America want to sit down and watch something that we made that looks a bit Japanese – that would be insane.”
Most of the credit though, he conceded, lies with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the books the series are based on.
“Don’t know better than Arthur Conan Doyle,” Moffat said.
“Don’t improve on what he did. Change it by all means and bring it into the modern day, that’s exactly what he would have done.”
“At that point it was absolutely true that everybody in London including you if you were visiting London owned an A to Z,” he said.
“A very small number of years later absolutely nobody owns an A to Z, it’s all on their iPhone – it doesn’t work.
“That’s our version, our updated Sherlock Holmes, becoming a period piece in front of our eyes.”
Moffat said he has not yet discussed with co-creator Mark Gatiss the possibility of a fifth series but did not rule it out.
He joked that an aged Benedict Cumberbatch would don his old overcoat and revive the Holmes role when all their careers have “dipped”.
They were asked whether they were planning on any further adaptations after the comic books.
Vertue, 56, said: “There is something that we are working on in London but that’s not…”
“Oh, that’s true,” Moffat added. “We do have an answer but we are just not giving it.”
