The Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival hosted a Sherlock Masterclass featuring the show’s producer Sue Vertue, writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and actor Andrew Scott. The event was hosted by journalist, Boyd Hilton.

The team began by talking about the genesis of the show. Gatiss began, “It was immediately apparent from the idea of bringing it up to the present day that we would have to work through the stories that we knew and loved and work out a modern equivalent.”

Co-creator and writer Moffat added, “I think critically realising that [Watson] could still be just coming home from Afghanistan, we had the kindness to restate that hopeless war, was critical for us. And the idea of the blog.”

He continued: “I don’t think we got very real about it. We were just gossiping about what we thought someone should do. It was until I mentioned to Sue [Vertue] specifically how cross Mark and I would be if somebody else did an updated show – because we should have done it.”

Hilton moved on to the show’s format, praising its ambition and boldness. Vertue revealed, “We thought it was going to be smaller, I originally sold two sixty minute scripts. And then we made the pilot and I think we thought it was going to be a lovely piece that we’d all be very proud of.”

Gatiss responded, “I think the success of Wallander in those three 90-minute formats was an influence – that was a slot that was working. And then it made a big difference in terms of the scale of the story that we were going to tell.”

The 90-minute format was the not the original choice, and it took a suggestion from BBC drama commissioner, Ben Stephenson, to spark this change in direction.

Vertue recalled, “Ben [Stephenson] phone me and said, ‘Do you think you could them as 90 instead and I phoned you both up at Doctor Who and you said ‘Yes!’”

Moffat elaborated, “We were at the very first read-through, prior to the proper run [Matt Smith’s debut series], and you phoned up and you said, ‘Would you mind doing them as 90 minutes? If you say yes, it’s a commission.’ So Mark and I said ‘Yeah! Great!’ Without a twinge of conscience or regret.”

Hilton discussed the differences between the 60-minute pilot (available on the Series 1 DVD as an extra), with Moffat elucidating on the importance of the director: “One of the big differences is really that Paul McGuigan [director] came in and gave it such a visual style and gave it such a distinctive visual language, with all the floating text and all that. That is probably the biggest. Conceptually, it’s the same show but because we were new at it, not as well done. I think when we first made that we thought it was the best thing ever.”

The final part of the puzzle for Sherlock was the casting, though choices for the team were assured from the start, Moffat stated: “There was only ever been one person considered for Sherlock Holmes. Sue and I were watching Atonement knowing we were going to do Sherlock Holmes and there was Benedict [Cumberbatch] playing this creepy villain. And we thought, ‘Oh, he could be a Sherlock Holmes.’”

He continued: “I mentioned that to Mark who actually knew him. We got Benedict in, taped him in Beryl’s flat [Sue’s mother and television producer/agent] and sent it to the BBC and said, ‘Look, there is really no point in carrying on. That’s it, that’s the one.’”

Boyd Hilton wondered if the process was as simple to find Sherlock’s flatmate, Dr John Watson. Gatiss revealed: “It was a slightly longer, not terribly longer process to find a fit with Benedict and we saw great people but it was one of those things. As soon as they read together, the chemistry was obvious and Steve turned to me and said, ‘There’s the show’. It just sprang into life. Plus he’s short enough [Laughs].”

Looking to the future, with Series 3 starting filming in January and expected to be delivered in August, Gatiss hinted: “We made a decision that everything is canonical. So the Billy Wilder version, all the Rathbone’s, everything can be drawn as a Sherlock Holmes source.” Moffat added, “There’s a whole much of things, which are the things that we like best in Sherlock Holmes, that are not famous and are equally good.”

And, as you have probably read already, three words (which may be hints or “deliberately misleading”) have been revealed as teasers for Series 3: Rat. Wedding. Bow.

What are your hopes for Series 3? Let us know below…

> Buy the Series 1-2 boxset on Amazon.

> Order the BBC’s new official book, Sherlock: The Casebook, on Amazon.

Watch a clip from The Hounds of Baskerville…