Are you a Benedict Cumberbatch stan or a Jeremy Brett purist? Is everyone wasting their time trying to beat Basil Rathbone, or did Robert Downey Jr reinvent the role? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal creation Sherlock Holmes has appeared in countless dramatisations - find out where to stream the best ones with our ranked streaming guide, below.
First, a shout out to the offshoots, oddballs, reimaginings and Holmeses in disguise. Sherlock is a dog in Sherlock Hound and a mouse, or at least the obvious inspiration for a mouse sleuth, in The Great Mouse Detective. In Without a Clue he’s a character created by Dr Watson. In Miss Sherlock he is a she, with a female Watson to boot. For a while in the 2000s, the biggest TV show in the world was the one starring Hugh Laurie as a man with an intimidating demeanour, a drug addiction and a genius for deduction… he was a doctor, not a detective, but if you hadn’t twigged, the title of the series - House - was a cute clue.
Of the versions that feature a human man called Sherlock, plenty of the lesser-known ones deserve to be streamed. Horror stalwart Peter Cushing was a fine Holmes on the big screen - and in The Hound of the Baskervilles he stars in the Holmes story with the scariest horror vibes. Nicholas Rowe is a sharp, quirky young Holmes in Young Sherlock Holmes; Ian McKellen is a vulnerable old Holmes in Mr Holmes. Robert Stephens is the best random, one-off Holmes ever, as the lead in Billy Wilder’s funny, imaginative The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Then there’s Henry Cavill in Enola Holmes.
Having been established as a lead character in film by Basil Rathbone in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1939, Holmes was revived as a movie franchise in 2009 by Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law making for likably energetic versions of Holmes and Watson. But in recent years, any screen Holmes has to measure up to Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC TV series Sherlock. It made Cumberbatch an A-list star and brought Holmes back for a new generation: the later seasons arguably lose their way as they try to second-guess the show’s hyper-engaged fanbase, but at its best it’s a fearsomely slick, confident production.
Sherlock’s success left space for more TV takes on Holmes, with the American response coming in the form of Elementary. Led by Jonny Lee Miller as a troubled Sherlock in New York, its case-of-the-week format makes it a good bet for Holmes traditionalists, but Lucy Liu’s new spin on Watson keeps it fresh.
The wonder of Holmes derives from the original stories, however, and so our pick for the best Holmes ever is the one that most feels like the Conan Doyle character brought to life. That’s Jeremy Brett in Sherlock Holmes, the ITV series that ran for a decade from 1984. It’s the definitive version, with Brett the ideal of the great detective: mysterious, mercurial, playful and sharp. Scroll down to find out where to watch it, and the rest of our ranked list.
