The second season of “Sherlock & Daughter”, which is in competition this week at the Monte-Carlo television festival and is on the CW and Max in the United States, is still waiting for Greenlight, but not for the lack of ideas.
“They were just going to go out, and there were far too much for only eight episodes. If fate is good for us, there are so many wonderful stories to tell with these characters,” explains the writer Shelly Goldstein at the festival.
Brendan Foley, writer and creator of the show, adds: “I think we would like to do it international.
In the series, Sherlock Holmes (played by David Thewlis) is involved in a conspiracy involving the criminal union of the red thread. With his own surprise, he joined forces with Amelia Rojas (played by Blu Hunt), a young Native American woman whose mother was recently murdered. And who claims Holmes is his father.
Taking the character of Arthur Conan Doyle, who simply refuses to leave, was a “double -edged sword” for Foley.
“I don’t think anyone should do it lightly because you have 20,000 different versions of Sherlock. There is always a percentage of the public who would be absolute purists, and a percentage that has not read a word of [Conan Doyle] And knows Holmes of his 101 iterations. We use a fairly wide audience, including a very general public public who likes the fight, ”he jokes.
“Some people will always say:” Oh, you ruined it. It’s always good advice not to read the comments, but we went to people saying: “I’m sure it will be terrible” for “well, it was not too bad”. It was a beautiful thing, see this evolution, but you cannot be everything for everyone. »»
The Sherlock of Thewlis is a “classic Sherlock”, but with a touch: “It’s a lion in winter. It is older, more grumpy, then we are able to play with the other side. Amelia landed as a courageous meteorite, just in the little world of Holmes to the poor Holmes. ”
She also forces him to live something he hates the most: emotions.
“He is a great experimenter, so it is possible that once in his life, he could have thought:” What is all these things of human emotion for? I better try it. “What if it went as badly as possible on this occasion?
Goldstein adds: “When you think of recent sherlocks, they are all wonderful. Young, on the move, learning the ropes and breaking the rules. It is not our sherlock. He did everything. He did all the cases. He is always 12 stages ahead of everyone, but things change. Technology changes, crime, class. Very, very, very, very, crumes.
The team decided that having a daughter, not a son, would be “more difficult for Sherlock”.
“It’s a big challenge. Amelia is really her own wife; It has this American sensitivity and comes from an extraordinarily different culture. She is absolutely the last thing he would be ready to manage, ”she notes.
But with many other new shows turning to Conan Doyle – including the opening of Monte -Carlo “Watson” – Sherlock’s fatigue is real.
“I was worried,” admits Karine Martin, CEO of Starlings Entertainment, who produced the program with Albion Television, with Story First as a co -producer.
“There were so many big sherlocks. But once the scripts started to enter, and once we saw our characters, we firmly thought that it would really fill a space that had not yet been taken. The idea of the father father was something unusual to explore and then there is the fact that she is Amerindian. We wanted to attract this culture.”
According to Foley, “a story of Sherlock Holmes can be a colossal turkey, a work of genius or anything between the two.”
“It is indeed a genre in its own right, an IP, a kind of Holmes versa, if you wish. You better get up early in the morning if you are going to do it, unless you wanted to end up with a total failure.”
“Conan Doyle, like most writers, was entirely non -sentimental. I found him a letter from someone who made a scene version in the 1920s, and he said: “Mr. Conan Doyle, do you think it was terrible if he fell in love and married? He replied: “Kill him, marry him, do what you want with him!” It was quite open to new generations with different thoughts. »»
The actors Fiona Glascott, playing Lady Violet Somerset and Hunt were also at the festival.
“Being in Victorian England, it is not something I thought I would do. I love this period, even if this show does not pretend to be historically exact, “explains Hunt, who grew up from Robert Downey Jr. on the famous character.
“But my favorite sherlock is that of David, I am not kidding. I am a big fan of Mike Leigh and he is only one of the greatest actors. Without him, this show has no legs. He carries everything in which he is”, she praises the role “Study, meticulous”, which memorized the whole script before the first painting.
Holmes is responsible for certain archetypal male characters, she supports – even in other shows.
“Don Draper is like Sherlock Holmes, but in advertising. Tony Soprano is like Holmes, but it’s a gangster. This character who hates and fights, has strange relationships with people and is too good in what he does.”
Instead of playing Amelia as a complete opposite to Sherlock, she wanted her to realize, at the end of the show, that she looks more like him than she would like to admit.
“It also makes it better.”
But its various history – and capacities – are sometimes useful.
“This American and native aspect, it opens up [the show] Until new audience. You see that she has capacities and skills that Sherlock would not have. She is more out of the way and enters conversations in a way he cannot. They play a lot with it in the show. »»
Hunt used the spectacle money in the next to come “replay” film, which will see it act alongside the Fiancé Jason Lester.
“They say that this is something you should not do, but at this point, I wanted to tell a certain story and I did not think that someone else would finance it. It is a bit of my life of” The New Mutants “, it’s very personal. I didn’t want someone to tell me what to do and what not to do.”
With Peter Vack, he sees a couple going to Macedonia. After meeting an old co-star, “things go crazy and screwed up,” said Hunt, which ended up modifying the film “very indie”.
“I have been in a small room, in my tracksuit pants, for a year. So how did I get to Monaco?! ”
