I think it's a good idea, especially if one is deep-lying and the other plays farther forward. But it's not necessarily a new idea -- think of Pirlo and Kaka at Milan in their (most recent) heyday
The key is that your deep-lying playmaker must also have good defensive and positional awareness, because he often serves as a shield in front of the back 4. This was true for Pirlo -- and he did it well -- but my instinct is it's even more important now with the shift to 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 and the changing player responsibilities. Alonso is another great example -- half dm, half playmaker, if you want to break it down like that. And Gerrard served as the forward playmaker. I don't think it's a coincidence that both teams had an aggressive, harrying destroyer type to round out the midfield (Mascherano, Gattuso).
Arsenal right now seems to be trying some thing similar, with Wilshere as the deep-playmaker/shield, Cesc as the forward playmaker/attacker, and Song as the box-to-box harrier. Playing Wilshere at the bottom of midfield still bemuses me. Defensively it seems to be working all right and he's good in attack when he comes forward (and, say, Song drops off to cover). But I don't see him showing any signs of controlling the pace, etc. of the game from the deep position, like Pirlo or Alonso could. Which is fine and not surprising. Those are two pretty good players to try to live up to.
