London, March 22 (ANI): Sherlock Holmes’ new avatar will see the Baker Street detective police the alleys of modern London.

Benedict Cumberbatch will play Holmes while Martin Freeman will step into the shoes of his associate Dr Watson in the new BBC series.

Steven Moffat, the writer of Doctor Who, and actor-novelist Mark Gatiss of The League of Gentlemen fame, have scripted the series.

“Everything that matters about Holmes and Watson is the same,” the Telegraph quoted Moffat, as saying.

He added: “Conan Doyle’s stories were never about frock-coats and gas light; they’re about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes and frankly, to hell with the crinoline.”

The show will present the events in the life of Holmes and other characters with a new flavour.

For instance, when Watson first meets Holmes the detective deduces that the doctor has been to Afghanistan. And writers say this time Watson will have tended to troops battling the Taliban.

Gatiss, an avid Conan Doyle fan who spent his childhood in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, told the Observer: “I used to wish I had been brought up in Oxford or somewhere pretty.

“I retreated into Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to live like an 1895 detective, not in a grim post-industrial town.”

He added: “It’s a great comfort to me; a world in which German spies have bombs under their cloaks and submarine plans are stolen in the fog is a nice place to be when you fear that a dirty bomb might go off at Liverpool Street any day.”

The show, filming for which is underway, has already been sold to networks in the US and Australia.

The series is slated to air later this year. (ANI)