Sherlock Holmes is set for a new TV adventure... in Finland

A new TV adventure called Sherlock North is in the works charting the consulting detective’s time in Finland when he was on the run from Professor Moriarty.

The planned ten-part series is being overseen by Finnish/US production house Snapper Films and will draw on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s description of Holmes’ stay in Finland when he is on the run from his arch adversary after faking his own death at the Reichenbach Falls.

Doyle wrote about the interlude in his 1903 story The Adventure of the Empty House.

Under a false identity – an explorer named Sigerson – Holmes settles in Lapland, in northern Finland, sparking a culture clash between him and the earthier locals.

Finnish writer-director-producer Juha Wuolijoki revealed that he is working on the 10-part series at the Gothenburg Film Festival.

He says he wants to shoot the series in the winter of 2018 or 2019.

“I got to know representatives of the Conan Doyle Estate, and we were discussing the Sherlock brand; his stay in Scandinavia is in the book, but nobody has done anything about it,” the director said in a report by Variety.

“Originally I had thought of faking it, but it was not necessary. Here is a fish-out-of-water story: Holmes is hiding from Moriarty but doesn’t know how his new landscape works. But he cannot live if not involved in something. He is a cocaine user, and although he has promised his brother Mycroft that he won’t do this, he starts solving local small crime mysteries, which lead into some bigger issues, helped by a Finnish former woman doctor, Johanna Watson.

“Doyle did not write what he did there, we created that, and it has been totally approved by the Doyle Estate. It is a Nordic series, with a Nordic identity, with an international appeal.”