Sherlock Anniversary Q&A: Steven Moffat 'Sherlock Does Love Molly'

Saturday the 25th of July 2020 marked a decade since the world was first introduced to Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson in BBC One’s Sherlock. To mark the anniversary, creators Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and Sue Vertue took part in a Q&A session answering fan questions read out by Moffat and Vertue’s son (and young Sherlock) Louis Moffat.

You can see the full 25-minute Q&A session courtesy of Sherlockology. It’s a warm, nostalgic chat, peppered by jokes, filming memories and affectionate ribbing of their host.

Questions ranged from the creators’ favourite Holmes and Watson other than their own (as ever, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, though several incarnations were fondly name-checked), most challenging scenes to film (the gushing cold Reichenbach Falls in ‘The Abominable Bride’), what Irene Adler is doing now (‘something naughty’), and how Sherlock Holmes would react to lockdown (‘Sherlock would quarantine himself for three months without knowing that he had!’ says Moffat. ‘He’d make Mrs Hudson wear a mask as she delivers the food to him in case she’s poisonous and he’d probably spray her down’).

Are there any remaining Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories that Gatiss and Moffat have an ambition to adapt? Moffat said they’ll ‘probably remain quiet on the ones [they’re] really interested in’ and brought up the difficulty of adapting a far-fetched but attractive story like ‘The Speckled Band’ (no spoilers here, to your copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes go).

Asked which Sherlock script changed most from its first draft to the finished product, the creators remembered the trouble they had with series three’s ‘The Sign of Three’ (John and Mary’s wedding episode). ‘It was extremely long and yet it just wasn’t long enough, we just kept adding incidents,’ remembered Gatiss. ‘When you have mini cases, which are very exciting and fun to do, it’s like doing the joke, just a tiny version, but then you forget that they don’t actually take up that much screen time!’ he laughed.