Morris Chestnut To Star In ‘Watson’ As Arthur Conan Doyle-Inspired Drama Gets CBS Series Order

Nellie Andreeva
·3 min read
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CBS has handed a straight-to-series order to Watson, from writer Craig Sweeny (Elementary), Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment and CBS Studios, for the 2024-25 broadcast season. Morris Chestnut is set to play the title role and executive produce the medical drama inspired by the characters from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Last January, CBS ordered two drama pilots, Elsbeth starring Carrie Preston and Matlock starring Kathy Bates, as well as writers rooms for two medical drama projects, Watson and The Pact.

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In anticipation of a series pickup, CBS and CBS Studios recently attached Chestnut as the lead and Larry Teng as director and executive producer of the first episode, paving the way to a formal greenlight.

The Pact, from the CBS/NAACP Production Venture, has been on a different timetable. It remains in development after attaching a supervising writer just before the start of the WGA strike and is on track to go to a writers room in the near future.

Watson is described as a medical show with a strong investigative spine, featuring a modern version of one of history’s greatest detectives as he turns his attention from solving crimes to solving medical mysteries. The series lives in a universe where Holmes has been killed off, something Conan Doyle reportedly intended to do with The Final Problem.

In Watson, a year after the death of his friend and partner Sherlock Holmes at the hands of Moriarty, Dr. John Watson (Chestnut) resumes his medical career as the head of a clinic dedicated to treating rare disorders. Watson’s old life isn’t done with him, though—Moriarty and Watson are set to write their own chapter of a story that has fascinated audiences for more than a century.

“We are thrilled to feature such a beloved character from the world of Sherlock Holmes at the center of this series and have it brought to life by Morris Chestnut in a fresh and unexpected take on the immortal doctor,” said Amy Reisenbach, President, CBS Entertainment. “Craig Sweeny’s bold new vision for the complex Dr. Watson deftly interweaves rich character storytelling with edge-of-your-seat medical mysteries.”

Sweeny, who spent five years on CBS’ Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson procedural Elementary, most of them as executive producer, wrote the pilot and will serve as showrunner on Watson. He executive produces the series alongside Chestnut, Kapital’s Kaplan and Brian Morewitz as well as Shäron Moalem MD, PhD.

Watson is CBS’ third new scripted series headed to the 2024-25 season, joining Matlock and comedy Poppa’s House, whose launches were pushed from this season due to strike-related production delays.

This marks Chestnut’s return to the medical arena after his series regular roles as doctors on Fox’s The Resident and Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. He also played the lead, a pathologist, on Fox’s crime drama Rosewood.

Chestnut is currently developing a movie at Netflix, which he is producing and set to star in, and a series for BET, which he is executive producing — both through his MC8 Entertainment banner.

In 2023, Chestnut won his second NAACP award for for Peacock’s The Best Man: The Final Chapters. (His first was for his work on Nurse Jackie.) Also last year, he was cast as a series regular in the upcoming second season of Onyx’s drama series Reasonable Doubt on Hulu and in the upcoming BET+ series Diarra from Detroit.

Chestnut is known for his memorable roles in films such as Boyz n the Hood, The Brothers, The Perfect Holiday, Think Like A Man, and most notably, The Best Man franchise, which he revisited with the Peacock limited series revival. In 2022, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Chestnut is repped by Verve and LINK Entertainment.

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