And ultimately, it's good for all of us to have more original programming on the air. Business doesn't drive the creative. So, in identifying a project like Dovekeepers, looking at something like Extant and looking at Under the Dome, it was about falling in love with a piece of material, getting excited by the creative direction, hearing a vision, and getting excited about the potential for those projects and building the business model around it. And they're not all modeled the same way. Every one is different.
Well, when you have an opportunity to build a show around one of the greatest detectives in all of literature, you're going to jump at that opportunity.
We're big fans of the show on BBC, and some of the greatest actors in film and television have done this character, from Basil Rathbone to Nicol Williamson to Michael Caine. (Executive producer) Rob Doherty came in with the pitch last season, it was immediately a show that we gravitated towards.
So many of the great detectives that we see on television now owe their origins to Sherlock Holmes. What was very exciting about Rob's pitch and script was that he is a real Holmes-ian expert. He knew all of the mythology. He was very well-versed in the genesis of Holmes and the stories. And the twist with Watson is something we jumped at immediately. It's a very forward-thinking way of doing the show.
Rob Doherty has been a real superstar for us The Mentalist for years. He is an extremely talented writer, and he just tapped into the DNA of this character in a way that we'd not heard before. So, from the moment it walked in the door, and then we read the script, it was a definite player for us.
