Moffat Annoyed by “Elementary”

Sherlock producer Stephen Moffat says the CBS update of Sherlock Holmes, Elementary annoys him.

Speaking to BBC Radio, Moffat says the network turned down a pitch to adapt the hit British series for American networks, but that plan was turned down.  Then CBS began to move forward with Elementary.

“It isn’t a version of our show. … They’ve just decided to go off and do one of their own, having been turned down by us to do an adaptation of our version. So how do you think I feel about it? Annoyed is in there.” he says. “The bigger problem for us with Elementary is, what if it’s terrible? What if it’s awful? Then it degrades the brand. … I remember there was a legitimate American version made of Coupling, actually adapted from our version. It was terrible and it was a disaster and it did sort of diminish the original. So if there’s this completely unrelated rogue version of Sherlock going around and it’s bad, it can be bad for us.”

And while the BBC is considering legal steps against the pilot and potential series, Moffat says they may not put a stop to the American version.

“We don’t own Sherlock Holmes,” he says. “We don’t even own the idea of updating it. It’s been done before. 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. So if we did discover our material had made it into somebody else’s show we would have a problem with that. If there is no such incidence of that, then there’s nothing we can object to.”