The Best Live-Action Sherlock Made The Biggest Change To Arthur Conan Doyle’s Character

While there are countless screen versions of Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic super sleuth, only the BBC’s iconic adaptation of Sherlock Holmes made the change that was needed to redefine the character for a new generation. Without Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, viewers would never have gotten the many cop shows and detective dramas that have filled TV listings and streaming services for decades now.

Everything from CBS’s NCIS franchise to True Detective, to Murder She Wrote, to Columbo, to the iconic small-town murder mystery Twin Peaks, all have their shared roots in the author’s iconic mystery stories. Sherlock Holmes was one of the first and most influential heroes of detective fiction, and Conan Doyle’s stories about the character provided many of the formative tropes that still define detective dramas, murder mysteries, and police procedurals to this day.

Despite this, many Sherlock Holmes adaptations have flopped over the decades. Even among the takes on the character that succeeded, almost none could be considered truly definitive takes on the character. While ABC’s Will Trent is the definitive screen version of Karin Slaughter’s novel hero, dozens of different takes on Holmes vie for supremacy. However, the BBC’s adaptation, Sherlock, has one major advantage over the rest of them.

Benedict Cumberbatch In BBC’s Sherlock Is The Best Live-Action Version

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In the past two years alone, Prime Video’s Young Sherlock, The CW’s Sherlock & Daughter, and CBS’s Watson have all, as their titles imply, attempted to find a fresh, original take on the familiar story of Sherlock Holmes. However, none of them have managed to replicate the magic of the BBC’s four-season, 13-episode Sherlock, a live-action version of the character from The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss and Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat.

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock himself and Martin Freeman as his long-suffering sidekick John Watson, Sherlock made the ingenious decision to move Conan Doyle’s original stories into a contemporary setting. This allowed Sherlock to reintroduce its iconic character as a louche antihero, and saw the BBC show regain some of the edge the original stories boasted during their publication.

While a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations lean into the cozy, twee familiarity of the character, much like many Agatha Christie murder mystery shows, it is worth noting that Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories weren’t period pieces when they were originally published. The novels were fast-paced thrillers filled with what was then considered cutting edge science, meaning Sherlock’s modern-day setting is arguably truer to the books than a period setting would be.

Moving Sherlock Into Modern Times Was A Risky & Controversial Change

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There is no denying the reality that Sherlock’s final season dropped the proverbial ball and ensured the show didn’t achieve true greatness, but there was still a lot to love in the cult series. As well as making a star of Netflix’s future Tom Ripley, Andrew Scott, in a scene-stealing role as Moriarty, Sherlock provided an updated, thoroughly modern spin on a franchise that had become entirely too staid over the years.

In the years since Sherlock began, there have been innumerable efforts to revive the character for new audiences. 2012’s Elementary, 2018’s Miss Sherlock, the Netflix series The Irregulars, and the upcoming 2027 Sky production The Death of Sherlock Holmes all seek to offer new takes on one of the most iconic characters in literary history, and that’s without even mentioning the trio of hits shows listed above.

Clearly, for all of Sherlock’s flaws, the show’s decision to bring Sherlock into a modern-day setting undeniably injected new life into Conan Doyle’s creation. Imperfect final season or nine, the BBC’s Sherlock proved that Conan Doyle’s Baker Street sleuth was just as urgent and intriguing as ever provided the character got an overdue change of scenery and a new historical era to explore.

Release Date

2010 – 2017-00-00

Network

BBC One

Showrunner

Steven Moffat