Sherlock & Daughter brings a fresh twist to Baker Street at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival 2025

At this year’s Monte-Carlo Television Festival, the spotlight fell on a detective whose shadow has loomed over literature, stage, and screen for more than a century: Sherlock Holmes.

But in Sherlock & Daughter, creator Brendan Foley and his team have given the great detective a twist that even Conan Doyle might have raised an eyebrow at: Holmes now has a possible daughter, Amelia.

Speaking at the festival, Foley admitted that taking on Sherlock Holmes was “a double-edged sword,” given the 20,000 or so previous versions across media. “You can’t please everyone,” he said, “but our Sherlock is both classic and unexpected: older, grumpier, a lion in winter; set in Victorian London, but with new energy brought by Amelia, who crashes into his well-ordered life like a ‘spunky meteorite.’”

A Holmes for a Changing World
David Thewlis’s Sherlock is no young upstart learning the ropes. He’s “done every case, always twelve steps ahead,” said writer-producer Shelley Goldstein. Yet it’s the end of the 19th century: technology, crime, and class are shifting, and into this world steps Amelia, played by American actress Blu Hunt. Their relationship is the emotional heart of the show—one built not on sentimentality, but on the friction between Holmes’s detachment and Amelia’s brash determination. Foley explained the choice of making Holmes’s potential offspring a daughter rather than a son: “It’s harder for him. It’s the last thing he’d be prepared to deal with, which makes for the best storytelling.”

The Amelia Effect
For Hunt, the journey to Amelia was unusually long. She was attached to the project nearly a year before cameras rolled, and when she learned Thewlis had signed on, she dropped another job offer to join Sherlock & Daughter. “The idea of a period piece with this kind of revisionist twist was exciting,” she said. Amelia’s American and Indigenous background gives her investigative instinct and social freedom that set her apart from the Londoners around her. “She can go into conversations or dig for answers in ways Sherlock just can’t,” Hunt noted.

Her preparation involved less strict historical accuracy and more imaginative construction: “There’s never really been a character like Amelia in history or fiction, so I had to start from scratch.” Over eight episodes, Amelia evolves from a naïve outsider to someone surprisingly like Sherlock: more reserved, more goal-driven, and sometimes as arrogantly sure of herself as the great detective.

Casting the Master Detective
Landing Thewlis was a coup. “He read one script, asked for another, then all of them,” Foley recalled. By the first read-through, he had memorized all eight episodes scripts taped to his walls at home. His presence elevated the cast. “Everyone, young or old, raised their game to keep up,” Foley said. Goldstein called him “the smartest person in the room who carries certainty without arrogance.”

Villains, Corsets, and Irish Locations
Fiona Glascott’s Lady Violet brings intelligence and menace in equal measure, her performance so sharp it once prompted the Irish crew to boo and applaud in the same breath. Shooting took place mainly in Dublin, chosen both for its period-appropriate streets and its attractive production incentives. The result, said Foley, was “incredible locations” that gave Victorian London a distinctly Irish grandeur.

From 221B to the World
While Season 1 focuses on the pair’s growing bond amid cases of crime and the heart, the creative team already dreams of expanding the scope, perhaps to America or Australia, exploring the globalization of crime at the turn of the century. “If the fates are kind, there are so many more stories to tell,” Goldstein teased.

For Hunt, the experience was as much about collaboration as character. Working opposite Thewlis, she said, taught her the value of meticulous preparation and gave her confidence to challenge blocking or dialogue when it didn’t feel true. “By the end, it was so collaborative. We both brought ideas every day.”

A Festival Debut
Monte-Carlo marked Sherlock & Daughter’s first major festival outing, thanks to distributor Federation’s strategic submissions. And while Sherlock Holmes may have been reimagined countless times, the creators believe their father-daughter dynamic, period setting, and blend of mystery with warmth fill a space no other adaptation has claimed.

As Foley put it, “A Sherlock Holmes story can be a colossal turkey or a work of genius. We just wanted to make ours honest, heartfelt—and fun. In tough times, the world needs a bit more joy.”