Moffat fans...

Just in from Broadcast...

Edinburgh 08: Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat has teamed up with The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss for a contemporary update of Sherlock Holmes.
The pair have each written an episode of the drama for Hartswood Films and are set to deliver a pilot to BBC head of fiction Jane Tranter early next year.

If the series is greenlit, Gatiss will take over as executive producer while Moffatt prepares for his first year of Doctor Who in 2010.

The project is Moffat's second updating of Victorian literature for the BBC, following his six-part series Jekyll, which was broadcast on BBC1 last year.

The era is also a personal passion of Gatiss, who wrote the Doctor Who adventure The Unquiet Dead featuring Charles Dickens and has also written two novels featuring his Victorian sleuth Lucifer Box.

Moffat is also developing a BBC comedy series for Hartswood, Adam and Eve.

Author: Robin Parker.

NOooooooooo! NO NO NO! Period! Not modern! PERIOD!

With you there old bean, I think, though, that they mean the update will be contemporary not the setting. Giving Sherlock twenty first century sensibilities, and I'm guessing humour, but within the Victorian era still.

I hope so anyway.

Also humongous feature and interview with the great guy in Deathray.

Never realised he'd written so much.

The trouble is a lot of writers have written as much as him, but very very few have written so much original material of such a consistently high standard.

I have, it's just no one wants to produce it.

Well write some better stuff then Sootyj!

Quote: Marc P @ August 24 2008, 10:52 AM BST

With you there old bean, I think, though, that they mean the update will be contemporary not the setting. Giving Sherlock twenty first century sensibilities, and I'm guessing humour, but within the Victorian era still.

I hope so anyway.

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It should all be in context and correctly contemporary to the period. The only 'modern' thing about it should be a better picture quality for today's TV screens!

Quote: Aaron @ August 24 2008, 11:07 AM BST

It should all be in context and correctly contemporary to the period. The only 'modern' thing about it should be a better picture quality for today's TV screens!

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Well it won't be, because it will be shot on tape and not film.

Says who? Surely it would be shot in HD, so inherently higher quality regardless of the medium?

Aaron, for authentic Victorian realism on screen, you have to be able to film in candlelight and gaslight and smog etc. HD can do that but it doesn't do it as well as film. It picks up too much detail and none of the softness, vagaries of light as perceived by the human eye in those conditions. When the BBC was the best television provider in the world we used more film than any Studio anywhere. Now we don't and it's not a coincidence that we are no longer the provider of the best TV in the world.

I'm faiiiirly sure that they could produce the effect if they wanted it. And the point is I want them to want it. Even if only in post. And I can't see them spending the cash on a big drama not in HD now.

Anyway, method of filming is largely irrelevant to my original point, which was that I want it set properly the late 1800s, or whenever the books originally were.

I think you are confusing HD as a viewing medium and as a recording medium. Stuff shot on film looks amazing on HD, that is why they are re-releasing all kinds of old films because they are stunning in blu ray on a HD set up. Think Blade Runner etc. Trust me if they could afford to film it with film... they would. It is gtting better, though, so fingers crossed all round. I am certainly looking forward to it, if it is set, as you rightly hope, in the correct period.

Gatiss is OBSESSED with Victoriana so don't worry, it will be ace.

Quote: Marc P @ August 24 2008, 12:26 PM BST

Trust me if they could afford to film it with film... they would.

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They will. There's no selling to the Yanks if it's not HD. It'd almost certainly be a co-prod anyway. BBC/WGBH perhaps.

Quote: zooo @ August 24 2008, 2:28 PM BST

Gatiss is OBSESSED with Victoriana so don't worry, it will be ace.

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I still don't trust him.