'Watson' Finally Gains a Sherlock in Robert Carlyle for Season 2

It took $16 million in bribes and firing Stephen Colbert (pardon me, "the ending of the Late Show franchise"), but Paramount's merger with Skydance has cleared its final hurdle with FCC approval and a date set to close in August 2025. The Paramount-Skydance Corporation, as it will be known, will have a lot on its plate from the word go. High-profile assets, such as 60 Minutes and the aforementioned Late Show, will likely receive the most attention as they collapse. However, the broadcast network CBS, once known as "The Tiffany Network," will still be in the business of producing hit TV shows, including the Sherlock Holmes-inspired Watson.

Paramount+ has underperformed as a streaming service, but CBS is still managing to produce hits, and not all of them are branded with CSI, FBI, NCIS, and other acronyms. Matlock, for example, creatively revived a beloved franchise for the 21st century, as did Watson, which took the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, twisted them through an American wringer, and came up with a medical mystery series starring Holmes' BFF, Doctor John Watson (Morris Chestnut). The series, set in contemporary America, takes place after Sherlock and Moriarty's fight at the Reichenbach Falls, when Watson believes his best friend to be dead and must go on with his life.

Doing a Sherlock-without-Sherlock style mystery series set when Sherlock canonically isn't dead was a minor stroke of genius on Watson's part. If the show failed to take off, Sherlock could remain dead. However, should it succeed in securing multiple seasons (which it has), the audience has the foreknowledge that eventually, Sherlock returns, handing the series a built-in series-long mystery arc as John Watson pieces it together. To that end, the show has now cast its Sherlock, most likely for flashbacks in the beginning, but with an eye towards the character's eventual return, with future Sir Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty) cast in the role.