Created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and produced by Hartswood Films for the BBC, Sherlock is a contemporary reimagining of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories, transplanting the iconic duo of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson into present-day London. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Holmes as a self-described high-functioning sociopath who works as a consulting detective for Scotland Yard, while Martin Freeman plays Watson as a war veteran freshly returned from Afghanistan. The series ran across four seasons and a special episode between 2010 and 2017, each episode designed at feature-film length — 90 minutes — rather than the standard television hour. It won nine Primetime Emmy Awards, holds a 9.0 rating on IMDb from over one million votes, and is ranked among the top 25 television series of all time on that platform.
Behind the Scenes. The idea for the series was conceived by Moffat and Gatiss during a train journey to the Doctor Who production offices in Cardiff, where both men worked as writers, and where they fell into conversation about their shared admiration for Conan Doyle’s stories. Moffat pitched the idea to his wife, producer Sue Vertue, that same evening, and she persuaded them to take it to the BBC. Benedict Cumberbatch was the only actor ever seriously considered for the title role — his own mother reportedly told him he did not have the right nose for it. The role of Watson proved far harder to cast: Matt Smith auditioned and was not offered the part, though the producers were sufficiently impressed to remember him when casting the lead in a revival of Doctor Who shortly afterward. A pilot episode in a conventional 60-minute format was shot and then substantially reshot with a new director, Paul McGuigan, who introduced the visual device of text messages appearing as floating on-screen graphics — now one of the show’s most imitated stylistic signatures. The original pilot is available on the DVD release and stands as a fascinating parallel-universe version of the show. Sherlock’s iconic black Belstaff coat was eventually given to Cumberbatch as a birthday present by Mark Gatiss, who had purchased it personally. The crew of the series is exceptionally close-knit to an almost surreal degree: the actors playing Sherlock’s parents are Benedict Cumberbatch’s real-life parents; Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington, who plays Mary Morstan, were real-life partners; Sue Vertue is Steven Moffat’s wife; Beryl Vertue, her mother, is a co-producer; Mark Gatiss’s husband appears as the barrister in The Reichenbach Fall; and Steven Moffat’s son plays a young Sherlock Holmes in several episodes. Exterior shots of 221B Baker Street are not filmed on Baker Street at all — the real location has become too cluttered with Sherlock-related tourist signage — but at 187 North Gower Street, approximately one mile to the east.
The Watch. The Rotary GS02424/21, worn by Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, makes its clearest appearance in Season 2, Episode 2 — The Hounds of Baskerville — when Holmes checks his wrist just before entering a secure military installation, approximately 24 minutes into the episode. The watch’s presence on screen is brief and entirely incidental to the plot, but the choice is anything but accidental: the GS02424/21 is a 38mm stainless steel dress watch with a guilloché-patterned silver dial, black Roman numerals, classic Breguet-style hands, and an offset running seconds subdial — an aesthetic vocabulary borrowed directly from the grand complications of 19th-century Swiss horology, particularly the Breguet Classique. On a Breguet Classique, that same aesthetic costs upward of €16,000; on the Rotary, it retailed at approximately £99. The contrast is entirely in keeping with the character: Sherlock Holmes is a man of fastidious taste and encyclopaedic cultural knowledge who lives in a flat he cannot quite be bothered to clean, wearing a watch that looks like it belongs in a museum while paying almost nothing for it. Rotary was founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1895 by Moise Dreyfuss and became the official timepiece supplier to the British Army during the Second World War. Following the watch’s appearance in the series, Rotary embraced the association fully, renaming the reference the Heritage Sherlock and continuing to produce updated versions of it. The watch has since become the brand’s best-known and most commercially successful reference — a remarkable outcome for a piece of product placement so understated it almost goes unnoticed.
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Marketplace Price
€140
Movie Year:
2010
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