'Elementary' producer dishes about show's visit to London

NEW YORK, May 14 (UPI) -- "Elementary" creator Robert Doherty says he is looking forward to taking his New York-set detective drama to London for the show's Season 2 premiere episode.

The series stars Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as contemporary versions of author Arthur Conan Doyle's 19th-century sleuths Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

In this latest re-imagining of the famous duo, Sherlock, the brilliant mystery-solver, is also a recovering drug addict while Joan Watson is a surgeon-turned-sober companion.

CBS recently announced Sherlock will temporarily go home to London at the start of next season.

"The reasons we wanted to set the show in New York in the beginning -- they were two-fold," Doherty told United Press International during a recent teleconference with reporters.

"First and foremost we want -- we absolutely wanted to be able to draw an American audience to the show. And setting it in a city like New York, which in many respects echoes London, helped a lot," he said. "If you had to put Sherlock anywhere else [other than London,] at least, to my mind, New York City made the most sense. The other reason was it just seemed interesting.

"I started from a broken Sherlock. That was always what intrigued me. I loved the idea of doing a Sherlock who had bottomed-out and was in repair. And so the idea that he had left London, it fit quite nicely into what we wanted to do. There was a good strong reason for him to have gone to New York City. So, that was the thinking process as far as setting him there in the beginning. The truth is, production-wise, it's a lot of work to set even one hour in London. The time change alone is -- the time difference alone is pretty daunting. ...

"If it were easier for us to go to London, I guess maybe we would try it a few times a year. Since it's quite difficult, we're going to really enjoy this one opportunity that we have this coming season," he said.

So, will Aidan Quinn's "Elementary" character Capt. Tobias Gregson or any other members of the New York Police Department be going with their frequent collaborators Sherlock and Joan to London?

"The story's still being developed. So, it's hard to say at the moment. But my guess is it would only be Sherlock and Joan," Doherty said. "I think story-wise it might be hard to justify a trip for all of our players. I'd love to have Captain Gregson there. At least in the pilot we explained he worked and lived there for a little while. That's how he met Sherlock. So he does have some [connection] with Scotland Yard. But, at the moment, I'm going to say no. Probably we're going to limit this trip to Sherlock and Joan."