New Sherlock Holmes Series Is A “Clean Slate” For 139-Year Classic Detective
Ryan Northrup is a Senior Staff Writer on ScreenRant's Movie & TV News team, where he has authored nearly 5,000 articles, including features and reviews. A graduate of McMaster University, Ryan began his career in public relations before attending Vancouver Film School. There, he built lasting industry connections and optioned a feature film screenplay.
The Death of Sherlock Holmes is set to put a unique twist on the iconic detective.
Created by author Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes has now been portrayed by dozens of actors, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr., and Henry Cavill. Each adaptation of Doyle's work has tackled the detective in a slightly different way, but the upcoming series The Death of Sherlock Holmes is taking a bold new approach, following the character as an amnesiac after his tumble from Reichenbach Falls.
In a recent interview with Deadline, the show's new Sherlock actor, Rafe Spall, teases how the premise of The Death of Sherlock Holmes allowed for a bold new interpretation of the detective. According to Spall, Holmes as an amnesiac adds a new dimension to the character, and it allowed him to separate his own version of the character from those that came before. Check out Spall's comment below:
What makes it original is the fact that he’s someone who has no idea who he is. He gets these flashes of brilliant deduction that lead him toward understanding what kind of person he is, and eventually perhaps figuring out that he’s the most famous detective in the world. It’s a clean slate in a way. I didn’t feel like I was following in a long line of great actors who have played him in the past — Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone, Robert Downey Jr. and all these amazing people. I would have been much more frightened if it had been one of the Conan Doyle novels, which is what Steven Moffat adapted.
But the great characters in the modern Western canon are always ripe for interpretation. Hamlet gets done every year, and so does Sherlock Holmes, because they’re great pieces of work and great characters that can sustain different shapes and approaches.
The Death of Sherlock Holmes hails from creators Claudia Bluemhuber, André Küttel, and Pierre Monnard. The series sees Holmes rescued half-dead from an icy mountain stream in the Bernese Alps by a local woman named Alma (Deleila Piasko).
As Holmes attempts to regain his memories, he finds himself drawn into a deadly conspiracy when Alma's son is accused of killing the town doctor. The series also stars Thomas Kaschel as Dr. Watson, Christian Koerner as Mycroft Holmes, and Timothy Innes as Edward Pembroke.
The upcoming series arrives as Sherlock remains a draw. Cavill recently played the character in Netflix's Enola Holmes films, and development supposedly continues on Sherlock Holmes 3, the long-awaited follow-up to Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) that would feature Downey Jr. reprising his role. Hero Fiennes Tiffin also recently played the character in the Young Sherlock TV series.
The Death of Sherlock Holmes is set to premiere on Sky Television next year, and will consist of six episodes. Spall is known for projects like Hot Fuzz (2007), Life of Pi (2012), The Big Short (2015), and The Ritual (2017). He is also no stranger to the world of television, recently appearing in episodes of Smoke, Under Salt Marsh, Bait, Secret Service, and Trying. Spall is also set to portray Arthur Weasley in the upcoming Harry Potter TV show.
It remains to be seen how The Death of Sherlock Holmes will fare with audiences, but the show does represent one of the more unique takes on the character. In Doyle's novels, three years elapse between Holmes' fall from Reichenbach Falls and his return in The Adventure of the Empty House. The upcoming series has not been billed as a miniseries, suggesting strong viewership success could lead to further exploration of this time in Holmes' life in a season 2.
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