Murder Rooms (The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes)
by David Pirie (BBC, 2000-2001)
This cleverly written historical drama depicts a young Arthur Conan Doyle playing Watson to nascent Holmes figure Dr Joseph Bell (Doyle’s real-life tutor at Edinburgh University). Replete with Holmes-esque observational deductions, the feature-length mysteries are intriguing… but moreish at only six episodes.
Sherlock Holmes
BBC, 1968
Peter Cushing rises above the BBC’s stinginess and inept adaptations to embody a Sherlock Holmes at once cerebral yet exuberant, aloof but socially aware. Nigel Stock’s Watson is something of a retired teddy bear and only six of sixteen episodes survive un-junked.
The House of Silk
by Anthony Horowitz (Orion, 2011)
An aging Watson harks back to the most shocking of all his adventures with Sherlock Holmes, Horowitz delivering a pastiche that artfully evokes Conan Doyle’s great detective. Holmes is lofty, alacritous and yet vulnerable, the mystery absorbing, the narrative suitably Watson-esque. Top-hole.
Moriarty
by Anthony Horowitz (Orion, 2014)
No Sherlock Holmes or Watson, just a cleverly subversive homage and a body on the slab at Reichenbach, both tagged ‘Moriarty.’ Therein lies the mystery, Horowitz leading as Inspector Athelney Jones investigates and Conan Doyle’s London plays host to the ultimate swindle.