'Watson' Finally Gains a Sherlock in Robert Carlyle for Season 2

It took $16 million in bribes and firing Stephen Colbert (pardon me, "the ending of the Late Show franchise"), but Paramount's merger with Skydance has cleared its final hurdle with FCC approval and a date set to close in August 2025. The Paramount-Skydance Corporation, as it will be known, will have a lot on its plate from the word go. High-profile assets, such as 60 Minutes and the aforementioned Late Show, will likely receive the most attention as they collapse. However, the broadcast network CBS, once known as "The Tiffany Network," will still be in the business of producing hit TV shows, including the Sherlock Holmes-inspired Watson.

Paramount+ has underperformed as a streaming service, but CBS is still managing to produce hits, and not all of them are branded with CSI, FBI, NCIS, and other acronyms. Matlock, for example, creatively revived a beloved franchise for the 21st century, as did Watson, which took the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, twisted them through an American wringer, and came up with a medical mystery series starring Holmes' BFF, Doctor John Watson (Morris Chestnut). The series, set in contemporary America, takes place after Sherlock and Moriarty's fight at the Reichenbach Falls, when Watson believes his best friend to be dead and must go on with his life.

Doing a Sherlock-without-Sherlock style mystery series set when Sherlock canonically isn't dead was a minor stroke of genius on Watson's part. If the show failed to take off, Sherlock could remain dead. However, should it succeed in securing multiple seasons (which it has), the audience has the foreknowledge that eventually, Sherlock returns, handing the series a built-in series-long mystery arc as John Watson pieces it together. To that end, the show has now cast its Sherlock, most likely for flashbacks in the beginning, but with an eye towards the character's eventual return, with future Sir Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty) cast in the role.

Carlyle's casting announcement also brought our first official Season 2 synopsis:

The investigative medical drama is a modern version of one of history’s greatest detectives as he turns his attention from solving crimes to solving medical mysteries. While Watson’s team of “doc-tectives” may have defeated Moriarty last season, they remain determined in Season 2 in their mission to investigate and treat the world’s rarest diseases for their clinic’s patients.

With his eyes fixed on the future, Watson faces an unexpected twist when Sherlock Holmes, who was presumed dead, resurfaces, forcing him to confront a buried secret from his past — one that lies hidden within his own body.

Carlyle is the second British actor to play Holmes in a CBS procedural; Johnny Lee Miller starred in Elementary for nearly a decade in the 2010s. (Before that, the American variation of Sherlock-as-Medical Drama was Fox's House, and the reason Americans don't know Hugh Laurie is British.) Most who land the detective role are household names in the U.S., such as Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Henry Cavill (Enola Holmes), and Ian McKellan (Mr. Holmes); like Carlyle (and David Thewlis over on Sherlock & Daughter), they were already known from other works; adding the iconic character was more a cementing of status.

American actor Morris Chestnut will continue to star as the titular Watson, with the Season 1 core cast slated to return. Carlyle will join British actors Matt Berry (Great Expectations) and Ritchie Coster (Billions), Canadian actor Eve Harlow (Trigger Point), and American actors Rochelle Aytes (Monarch), Peter Mark Kendall (The Americans), and Inga Schlingmann (Take Two) in the new season. 

Showrunner Craig Sweeny (The Code) is the lead writer on the show, with director Larry Teng (Nancy Drew) helming episodes. Sweeny, Teng, and Chestnut serve as executive producers alongside Sallie Patrick, Shäron Moalem MD, PhD, Brian Morewitz, and Aaron Kaplan for Kapital Entertainment. Paramount Global Content Distribution distributes the series. 

Watson Season 2 will debut as part of CBS's 2025-2026 TV season's Fall Premiere Week, on Monday, October 13, 2025, at 10 p.m. ET, with episodes streaming the next day on Paramount+ (or whatever Paramount+ gets renamed to in the interim).