Awaiting More Ryeland and Pünd

There are a couple of interesting TV productions on the horizon.

First, America’s Public Broadcasting System (PBS) recently announced that filming has been completed on Moonflower Murders, an adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s 2020 mystery novel of that same title. Moonflower Murders is a sequel to Magpie Murders, which became such a rating hits on the small screen in 2022.

Janet Rudolph reports in her blog, Mystery Fanfare, that credit for Moonflower’s script goes to Horowitz, who also wrote the previous TV whodunit. This forthcoming six-part series will feature the same principal cast as its predecessor. Lesley Manville reprises her role as Susan Ryeland, the former London book editor who, since the events in Magpie, has relocated with her fiancé to the Greek island of Crete, where they struggle to operate a small hotel. Timothy McMullan will co-star as renowned literary detective Atticus Pünd.

According to a news release, this second tale’s plot finds Ryeland’s time in Greece being “disturbed by the shadow of a murder committed at a British country hotel eight years ago. Alan Conway [author and creator of the eccentric but brilliant Pünd] visited the hotel and wrote a novel based on what happened there. Cecily Treherne, the young woman who helps run the hotel, read the book and believed the wrong man had been arrested. Now she has disappeared. Can Susan uncover the secret hidden in the book and find Cecily before it is too late?”

“Moonflower Murders will air on most PBS stations in the U.S. and on BBC One in the UK,” says the British Web site Telly Visions. “No release date has been set as yet, but with most of the spring 2024 schedule complete, it’s a solid bet that it will probably follow its predecessor and debut as part of the [PBS] Masterpiece Fall 2024 lineup.”

Meanwhile, In Reference to Murder brings this news:

CBS has handed a straight-to-series order to Watson, from writer Craig Sweeny (Elementary) 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. 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.

There’s a bit more information about Watson here.