A Moriarty TV Series Is Coming — Sherlock’s Villain Gets His Own Crime Drama

The Sherlock Holmes universe just keeps expanding — and this time it’s the villain getting the spotlight.

Fremantle and British production company Archery Pictures have announced they are developing Moriarty (working title), a new crime drama series built around Professor James Moriarty, the fictional criminal genius Arthur Conan Doyle created as Holmes’ most formidable opponent. The project was announced Wednesday and reported by Deadline and Variety.

The show’s logline leans into the procedural format with a twist: Moriarty is reimagined as a Professor of Criminal Psychology at Durham University who, by night, operates as the mastermind behind every sophisticated crime in the North of England. When a rival criminal starts dismantling his underground empire, he’s left with one option — go undercover inside the police force as a consultant, using the law itself as a weapon. His partner on the inside is Detective Imogen Burrows, described as "a stoic Yorkshire detective," and the show promises that the real danger for Moriarty isn’t the rival he’s trying to take down — it’s Burrows slowly figuring out who he really is.

The team behind it is describing the series as "a modern reinvention of the crime procedural, based on the most famous villain in all of detective fiction."

The Team

Archery Pictures was founded by Kris Thykier in 2014. The company’s credits include Operation Mincemeat, Netflix’s Fate: The Winx Saga, and the Bradley Cooper romcom Is This Thing On? The scripts are being written by Chris Cornwell, who worked on A Discovery of Witches and Strike Back, alongside Oliver Lansley, known for Where’s Wanda? and Flack.

"We are thrilled to be working with Fremantle to bring to life the original and character-driven spin-off from the Sherlock Holmes universe that Chris Cornwell has created," Thykier said. "Moriarty will show audiences what it takes to be a criminal genius, combining genre thrills with a playful, dark, and thrilling dive into the psychology of villainy."

Rebecca Dundon, SVP of scripted content at Fremantle, added: "We instantly saw huge potential for a commercial, returning franchise that brings to life one of the more allusive characters in the Sherlock world: Moriarty. It’s exciting to collaborate with Kris and the team at Archery to bring a premium, propulsive, contemporary drama to screen that will not only be clever and hooky, but also give us a fresh spin on the procedural crime format."

A Character With History

Moriarty has been played by a long list of actors over the decades. Andrew Scott’s portrayal in the BBC’s Sherlock — opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes and Martin Freeman’s Watson — became one of the most talked-about villain performances in recent TV history. Jared Harris played him in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) alongside Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. More recently, Dónal Finn takes on the role in Prime Video’s Young Sherlock, one of several Holmes-adjacent shows currently in production or on air — including CBS’s Watson, which stars Randall Park.

The timing isn’t accidental. Conan Doyle’s copyright on the Holmes stories expired fully on January 1, 2023, opening the door for productions to adapt the characters without licensing fees. No casting has been announced for this version of the professor, and the series has yet to be picked up by a network or streamer. Fremantle is handling global distribution.