In Hollywood they have a kind of virus in the creative sector: it is difficult to trust a project that is not linked to an intellectual property, to a brand that managers and the public can recognize without effort. Thus, supposedly, it is easier for them to sell the production to the audience. In this obsessive search for a recyclable character or universe, a series that well exemplifies this endless trend has just received the green light: Watson, in reference to Sherlock Holmes’ right hand man.
Sherlock Holmes, for the record, will not be the protagonist of the production since the series will show the life of John Watson after the death of his detective friend at the hands of Moriarty. The character will resume his career as a doctor in a clinic to treat unknown diseases and thus stay away from crimes. Luckily, the cases that he will encounter in the consultation will allow him to continue exercising his research nerve. And, despite wanting to leave the past behind, Moriarty will try to prevent it with morbid games.
The excuse for creating this series is to exploit an idea raised by Arthur Conan Doyle himself, who wanted to murder Holmes in The Final Problem, and in the process imagine what Watson’s future would be like without him. Behind the project, there is also an expert in the detective universe: Craig Sweeny, who served as showrunner of Elementary, a contemporary adaptation of Conan Doyle, for five seasons. Watson is also designed for the CBS channel, which aired Elementary between 2012 and 2019.
Therefore, Sweeny will do something peculiar. After having creatively captained 77 episodes of Elementary, which turned Watson into a woman played by Lucy Liu, she will now take the same Conan Doyle material as a reference to rewrite the character. And, furthermore, he will transfer this interpretation of Conan Doyle to the medical sector, a maneuver that David Shore already did with House: Hugh Laurie’s doctor was inspired by Sherlock Holmes, both for his rough character and his approach to clinical cases.
“Craig Sweeny’s brave new vision for the complex Dr. Watson deftly intertwines a rich character narrative with medical mysteries that will keep the viewer on the edge of their seat,” CBS Entertainment said in statements reported by Deadline.
But, as happens with this type of advertisement, the first question is the following: Did we really have to take Watson as a reference? Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to write a medical series from scratch?
This Watson, furthermore, is developed while Netflix has already produced two films of Enola Holmes, the detective’s niece, with Himesh Patel as Watson; when we have two fresh series in the collective imagination of Conan Doyle, the BBC’s Sherlock and Steven Moffat, and Robert Doherty’s Elementary, not to mention the films starring Robert Downey Jr with Jude Law as John Watson.
When Watson (the series) is released, which will be in the 2024-2025 season, we will clear up any doubts about the quality of the proposal. But, regardless of the result, it is the umpteenth project that forces us to question the Hollywood industry’s obsession with creative recycling.
