While many mystery fans may tune in to sample Elementary on CBS this fall, don’t expect Sherlock producer Steven Moffat to be one of them.
Moffat tells IGN that he’s not “impressed” by the upcoming CBS series even though he hasn’t yet seen any final footage.
As you may recall, CBS approached Moffat and co-producer Mark Gattis about creating a US version of their popular BBC series, but Moffat felt the timing wasn’t right and they refused.
“We weren’t ready to do [a US remake] yet,” he says. “[CBS] said, ‘We’re great people to come to, we’re full of integrity’, – a few weeks later, we discovered they were just going ahead and doing it anyway. So that was another example of what happens in LA television, I suppose. I wasn’t very impressed by it. I haven’t had good experiences in general with that lot.”
Moffat criticized the network’s conduct, calling it “pretty remarkable behavior”.
“It’s tough,” he explained. “If [Elementary is] bad, it debases the coinage of our show [or] if it’s too like our show, we’ll have to take action.”
If Elementary is bad it will NOT debase the coinage of Sherlock. That’s utterly ridiculous. Just like Sherlock didn’t debase the Sherlock Holmes movies staring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. There is actually room for everyone to play in the sandbox.