Steven Moffat has declared that his hit series Sherlock was inspired by a desire to place the mythical detective Sherlock Holmes in a new historical context.

Speaking to Assignment X, the showrunner defended his decision to cast Benedict Cumberbatch as the Victorian sleuth, a part that has traditionally been played by older actors.

He explained: "Well, the thing is, people keep saying, 'Is this the youngest Sherlock Holmes?' You look at the Sherlock Holmes stories and the fact that we think of him as 50 is a product of the [film and TV depictions]. It's not true - he must be, in the first story, in his late 20s or early 30s. He's referred to as a young man, even in the first story as a student. So he clearly could be 29 in that first story.

"The great thing about reinventing Sherlock Holmes is that the whole story happens all over again. And we can do it any way we like. We can change the rules; we can shock you with what we do. So don't assume that we are going to do everything according to the rulebook. We are at times throwing it away. So it might be frightening - brace yourselves for shocks."

Moffat also revealed that his Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss was responsible for Cumberbatch winning the lead role in the BBC One series.

"Well, actually, Mark knew Benedict, but oddly enough, watching [the 2007 film] Atonement, in which he's the creepy villain, I sort of thought, 'He's brilliant and he looks a bit like Sherlock Holmes'. I talked to Mark and he said, 'I know him', so we just bunged the script off to him, he liked it, came in and read for it and that was it.

"Benedict was our first and only choice. It's a funny thing, but sometimes there are several James Bonds you can imagine, but sometimes there's just a natural choice. Benedict was the entire package for us."

Sherlock is to return for a second series in autumn 2011 on BBC One.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io