The Gilmore Girls reunion was inspired by Sherlock

“I’m massively into Sherlock,” said series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. “And what I love about Sherlock is the format is longer than an hour.

“They’re their own mini-movies. It felt like a format that would work well for us on a storytelling level.”

Gilmore Girls will return for four episodes on Netflix later this year, each one an hour and a half long.

The series creator apparently even discussed the Sherlock connection with Lauren Graham, who plays Lorelei Gilmore.

“We were having lunch,” said Graham. “And that was where she really laid out what her thought was about it. Talking about the model of Sherlock as both the amount of time and also the way they do specials.” Graham.

Apparently Sherman-Palladino was also impressed by the fact Sherlock episodes can be enjoyed without watching previous series, and wants her Netflix show to appeal to viewers who weren't already fans of Gilmore Girls’ 153 episodes.

“We wanted to do something that broadened it in a sense,” she said. “We weren’t interested in doing something that was ‘just for the cool kids’”

Sherman-Palladino also discussed the decision not to bring the show back on a television network. She said: “We wanted to do it off-network and without commercials so we didn’t have Supergirl flying through.”