CBS has handed a straight-to-series order to Watson, from author Craig Sweeny (Elementary), Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Leisure and CBS Studios, for the 2024-25 broadcast season. Morris Chestnut is about to play the title position and govt produce the medical drama impressed by the characters from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
Final January, CBS ordered two drama pilots, Elsbeth starring Carrie Preston and Matlock starring Kathy Bates, in addition to writers rooms for 2 medical drama tasks, Watson and The Pact.
In anticipation of a sequence pickup, CBS and CBS Studios lately hooked up Chestnut because the lead and Larry Teng as director and govt producer of the primary episode, paving the best way to a proper greenlight.
The Pact, from the CBS/NAACP Manufacturing Enterprise, has been on a special timetable. It stays in growth after attaching a supervising author simply earlier than the beginning of the WGA strike and is on monitor to go to a writers room within the close to future.
Watson is described as a medical present with a powerful investigative backbone, that includes a contemporary model of one among historical past’s biggest detectives as he turns his consideration from fixing crimes to fixing medical mysteries. The sequence lives in a universe the place Holmes has been killed off, one thing Conan Doyle reportedly meant to do with The Ultimate Downside.
In Watson, a 12 months after the demise of his good friend and companion Sherlock Holmes by the hands of Moriarty, Dr. John Watson (Chestnut) resumes his medical profession as the pinnacle of a clinic devoted to treating uncommon issues. Watson’s previous life isn’t accomplished with him, although—Moriarty and Watson are set to put in writing their very own chapter of a narrative that has fascinated audiences for greater than a century.
“We’re thrilled to function such a beloved character from the world of Sherlock Holmes on the heart of this sequence and have it dropped at life by Morris Chestnut in a contemporary and sudden tackle the immortal physician,” mentioned Amy Reisenbach, President, CBS Leisure. “Craig Sweeny’s daring new imaginative and prescient for the complicated Dr. Watson deftly interweaves wealthy character storytelling with edge-of-your-seat medical mysteries.”
Sweeny, who spent 5 years on CBS’ Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson procedural Elementary, most of them as govt producer, wrote the pilot and can function showrunner on Watson. He govt produces the sequence alongside Chestnut, Kapital’s Kaplan and Brian Morewitz in addition to Shäron Moalem MD, PhD.
Watson is CBS’ third new scripted sequence headed to the 2024-25 season, becoming a member of Matlock and comedy Poppa’s Home, whose launches have been pushed from this season as a consequence of strike-related manufacturing delays.
This marks Chestnut’s return to the medical enviornment after his sequence common roles as docs on Fox’s The Resident and Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. He additionally performed the lead, a pathologist, on Fox’s crime drama Rosewood.
Chestnut is at present growing a film at Netflix, which he’s producing and set to star in, and a sequence for BET, which he’s govt producing — each via his MC8 Leisure banner.
In 2023, Chestnut gained his second NAACP award for for Peacock’s The Finest Man: The Ultimate Chapters. (His first was for his work on Nurse Jackie.) Additionally final 12 months, he was forged as a sequence common within the upcoming second season of Onyx’s drama sequence Affordable Doubt on Hulu and within the upcoming BET+ sequence Diarra from Detroit.
Chestnut is thought for his memorable roles in movies similar to Boyz n the Hood, The Brothers, The Good Vacation, Suppose Like A Man, and most notably, The Finest Man franchise, which he revisited with the Peacock restricted sequence revival. In 2022, he obtained a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame. Chestnut is repped by Verve and LINK Leisure.
