Mark Gatiss thinks his show ‘Sherlock’ gave Benedict Cumberbatch the platform to become an international star.
The 50-year-old show creator believes the talented actor owes a lot to the detective drama series, in which he plays the titular character, because it catapulted him into the limelight and put his name out across the globe.
Writing in the Radio Times magazine, he said: "No one marched on ITV when James Norton, a relatively new face, was cast in the lead of ‘Grantchester’ and now after three series he’s part of the furniture. When we started filming ‘Sherlock’, Martin Freeman was the established name. But it made Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott into overnight stars, so viewers do response to you being bold and imaginative."
However, although he’s pleased that his programme has made the 40-year-old hunk into a global name, he has admitted it’s had its downfalls as Benedict’s now-busy schedule means the future of ‘Sherlock’ is up in the air.
Gatiss said recently: "It’s not lack of will – it’s a nightmare to schedule. It was very, very hard to schedule the last series, because of Martin and Benedict’s availability. And Steve’s [Moffat, his co-writer] and mine.
"There is always that ‘Fawlty Towers’ principle of, ‘Let’s just leave it’. We’ve had the keys to Baker Street for a while, but one of the wonderful things is that they’re always shared. They were shared while we were making it. There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘That was our version, somebody out there go and do their version’."
But it seems Gatiss and Moffat have different views as the 55-year-old television writer – who is the outgoing showrunner for ‘Doctor Who’ – is adamant that there will be another instalment – but it won’t be anytime soon.
He said: "We did [the last series] a year ago, just about, and I’ve been flat-out on ‘Doctor Who’ ever since. So I haven’t really thought about it. Mark [has] been doing other stuff as well, so we haven’t sat down and had a proper talk about what we would do with another series. I assume we will. I sort of assume we’ll come back."
Sherlock made Benedict Cumberbatch into star
