The Sherlock Holmes-based medical drama Watson debuted on the 2025 TV schedule back in January and was popular enough to be renewed for a second season that will air sometime in 2026. However, The CW’s Sherlock & Daughter has also been a quiet success, becoming the channel’s #1 scripted drama on linear and ranking #4 on HBO Max’s top 10. While there’s no word yet on if Sherlock & Daughter Season 2 will happen, Brendan Foley, the show’s creator, already has an interesting idea for if the show comes back. Additionally, he shared his opinion on why adapting the lore of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed literary detective can be a “double-edged sword.”
What Sherlock & Daughter’s Creator Has In Mind For Season 2
Sherlock & Daughter is one of the shows competing at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival’s Golden Nymph Awards in the fiction category. Foley is attending the big event with other talent from the series, including writer Shelly Goldstein and actress Blu Hunt, who plays Amelia Rojas, the titular Daughter. While taking some time to speak with Variety, the creator had this to say about what he and the other writers would like to do in Season 2:
I think we’d like to take it international. At the end of the 19th century, society is moving from criminals robbing banks to criminals owning banks. Crime is blissfully international. I’d like to see what’s happening in the U.S., Europe, Australia at the same time. This great, glorious British Empire was still in its heyday, but it’s a big world out there.
I can get behind this. The events of Sherlock & Daughter Season 1 were largely confined to London, which is hardly surprising considering that’s where most Sherlock Holmes stories take place. But expanding to an international scope in Season 2 would certainly raise the stakes for Amelia Rojas and David Thewlis’ Sherlock.
The series take place in 1896, so it’d be great to see them investigate a new conspiracy that has them traveling outside of England’s capital and be forced to deal with how crime is changing ahead of the 20th century. It’s one thing to get used to telephones becoming part of everyday life, as was shown in Season 1. It’s another to grapple with societal change that leads to crime being even more difficult to combat.
Why Adapting The Sherlock Holmes Stories Is A “Double-Edged Sword”
Whether Sherlock & Daughter continues into Season 2 or ends up being a one-season affair, Brendan Foley has taken adapting this beloved source material quite seriously. Nearly 140 years after A Study in Scarlet was published, Sherlock Holmes remains one of the most popular fictional characters of all time. With such popularity comes the immense pressure of making a new adaptation stand out, as Foley detailed:
I don’t think anyone should do it lightly, because you have 20,000 different versions of Sherlock. There’s always a percentage of the audience who’d be absolute purists, and a percentage who haven’t read a word of [Conan Doyle] and knows Holmes from his 101 iterations. We’re appealing to quite a large audience, including a very mainstream U.S. audience who enjoys wrestling.
That last part was a joke, but the point stands. Sherlock & Daughter not only has to strike a fine balance between delivering intelligent writing and being accessible to audiences across the world, but also strike a separate balance of making a new Sherlock Holmes that offers something new while still honoring Arthur Conan Doyle’s original works. That’s a lot to juggle, but considering how well Sherlock & Daughter’s first season was received, Brendan Foley and his team apparently hit the mark… mostly. He added:
A few people will always say: ‘Oh, you’ve ruined it.’ It’s always a good piece of advice not to read the comments, but we went from people saying: ‘I’m sure this will be terrible’ to ‘Well, it wasn’t too bad.’ That was a lovely thing, to see that evolution, but you can’t be all things to all people.
Sherlock & Daughter concluded its first season only a week ago, so it may be a while until we learn about the show’s fate. That said, you’re welcome to view those opening eight episodes either on The CW’s website or stream them with your HBO Max subscription.
