{"id":446064,"date":"2026-05-26T13:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/446064\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:27:08","slug":"if-you-try-to-fix-holmes-youll-get-your-arse-handed-to-you-do-we-really-need-another-sherlock-remake-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/446064\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018If you try to fix Holmes, you\u2019ll get your arse handed to you\u2019: do we really need another Sherlock remake? | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1893, in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, Arthur Conan Doyle<\/a> introduced Sherlock Holmes\u2019s older brother, Mycroft. Meeting Dr Watson for the first time, Mycroft shakes his hand and sighs: \u201cI hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spare a thought for the rest of us, Mycroft. More than a century later, Sherlock Holmes<\/a> has achieved a level of near-ubiquity that would alarm even the great detective himself \u2013 spawning ever more elaborate spin-offs that stretch his life backwards, forwards and sideways.<\/p>\n

This year has already given us Prime Video\u2019s Young Sherlock<\/a>, with an Enola Holmes<\/a> threequel on the way, work beginning on a second series of Sherlock & Daughter, starring David Thewlis, and fresh rumours of Robert Downey Jr dusting off the deerstalker for a third big-screen adventure.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Sky also announced The Death of Sherlock Holmes, a six-part series starring Rafe Spall<\/a> as an amnesiac Holmes forced to deduce his own identity high in the Swiss Alps. It fills in one of the detective\u2019s last remaining narrative blind spots \u2013 and raises an inevitable question: have we finally reached Sherlock saturation point?<\/p>\n

Cumberbatch\u2019s Holmes in 221B Baker Street, with his Watson (Martin Freeman) at the laptop Photograph: AJ Pics\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The evidence says yes \u2013 and it has been piling up for more than a decade, ever since Guy Ritchie made his first Sherlock Holmes film and Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat enlisted Benedict Cumberbatch to bring the detective into the modern day. Since then, we\u2019ve had Ian McKellen\u2019s Mr Holmes<\/a>, Netflix\u2019s The Irregulars, even the animated oddity Sherlock Gnomes<\/a>. Add this latest influx to the pile and we\u2019re surely at critical mass. Aren\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know,\u201d says Moffat. \u201cThere\u2019s always been adaptations of Sherlock<\/a> Holmes, now for over 100 years, and there doesn\u2019t seem to be any stopping it, or any loss of appetite.\u201d When his BBC Sherlock arrived in 2010, it did so between Ritchie\u2019s period-blockbuster versions. \u201cVery different takes, but both recognisably Sherlock,\u201d the writer adds. \u201cI expected to feel jealous or competitive about those movies, but I just ended up loving them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moffat recently worked with Holmes incumbent Rafe Spall on the political drama Number 10<\/a>, which will air on Channel 4 later this year, so he already knows something of the newest adaptation. \u201c[Spall] told me the idea, and I think it\u2019s utterly brilliant,\u201d he says. \u201cA brand-new take on the original, never \u2013 I think \u2013 done before. I can\u2019t wait to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armed and dangerous \u2026 Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law in Guy Ritchie\u2019s film Sherlock Holmes. Photograph: Warner Bros\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n

A new take? It seems impossible. But however improbable, it is worth taking seriously given Moffat\u2019s track record. And reinvention, after all, is woven into the detective\u2019s nature. Having dispatched Holmes over a waterfall, Conan Doyle himself was the first to resurrect him \u2013 convinced by adoring fans to bring him back for The Adventure of the Empty House. In Conan Doyle\u2019s canon, he was brought back to life only once; in adaptation, he has returned time and again, each iteration straying further from the source material.<\/p>\n

But the purists will take their Sherlock however he comes. Calvert Markham, chair of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, says: \u201cThe joy is that Holmes continues to inspire original work which we can all enjoy.\u201d The reinterpretations don\u2019t bother traditionalists, he adds, as long as they respect and acknowledge the original texts. Before the Cumberbatch adaptation arrived, for example, Moffat and Gatiss even consulted the society. \u201cAnd they recognised the nuances of the canon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The female version \u2026 Millie Bobby Brown in Enola Holmes 2. Photograph: Album\/Alamy<\/p>\n

This, Markham believes, is why Holmes not only endures but is enjoying a new golden age of adaptation. Conan Doyle wrote almost 700,000 words (four novels and 56 short stories), populating them with characters so rich and memorable that \u2013 even if gender-flipped, merged or twisted to the point of being almost unrecognisable \u2013 they still stand up.<\/p>\n

\u201cHolmes and Watson are strongly drawn characters,\u201d says Markham, \u201cbut so are some of the lesser characters: Irene Adler, Professor Moriarty, Mycroft Holmes. They provide a rich seam for dramatic exploitation, and I guess \u2013 in Hollywood terms \u2013 Holmes and Watson are bankable names.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the crux of it. Just look at Young Sherlock, starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin. Based on a series of novels by Andrew Lane, the show was recently renewed for a second series and is one of Prime Video\u2019s all-time top 10 original programmes. In the US, after Elementary<\/a> \u2013 starring Jonny Lee Miller as the sleuth \u2013 ran for seven years on CBS, executive producer Craig Sweeny created Watson<\/a>, a medical mystery drama that ended earlier this month. Upon its debut last year, Watson was given a \u201cstraight-to-series\u201d order rather than having to prove itself with a pilot episode.<\/p>\n

Sidekick in the spotlight \u2026 Morris Chestnut as Watson in the series of the same name. Photograph: CBS\/Paramount<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sherlock Holmes brand sells,\u201d explains Sam Naidu, professor of English at Rhodes University and editor of the essay anthology Sherlock Holmes in Context. In fact, the worrying times we live in might mean more public appetite for adaptations. \u201cThis instability creates the demand for a secure, comforting, familiar icon of reason and order,\u201d she says. \u201cHolmes continues to provide the comfort of crimes solved, order restored and the triumph of good over evil. In the face of seismic sociocultural and political shifts, the world needs the rational reassurance and the satisfying story of a detective who succeeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

And succeed Holmes has. In contrast to \u201csuperhero fatigue\u201d, demand for the character is only growing. Regent\u2019s Park Open Air Theatre in London opened its 2026 season this month with a new Sherlock Holmes play by Joel Horwood. A video game released last year, The Beekeeper\u2019s Picnic, allowed players to step into the shoes of the consulting detective. \u201cThe phenomenon persists and keeps mutating and adapting,\u201d says Naidu, also citing literary continuations and expansions, from Ry\u014dsuke Takeuchi\u2019s manga series to, more unexpectedly, a trilogy of Mycroft Holmes novels written by former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (with Anna Waterhouse). \u201cThis continued literary output,\u201d she adds, \u201csuggests that the original stories are fecund enough to generate extended characterisations, new plot lines, alternative fictional worlds and subversive themes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It all comes back to Conan Doyle, then. Sherlock persists \u2013 and will continue to do so \u2013 because he was so fully realised to begin with, his world so well built that we still want to explore its shadowy corners. He was a lucrative intellectual property even in the 1890s, when readers spent a decade demanding his return, and we\u2019re still clamouring for fresh cases now. Moffat thinks we\u2019ll continue to do so, as long as we don\u2019t expand or alter the mythology too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing about Sherlock Holmes,\u201d Moffat says, \u201cis that the format is cleverer than you. You look at the format, and you examine the rules, and you do as you\u2019re told. Yes, you try and push it sometimes \u2013 that\u2019s good. But the big stuff? Leave it alone. Remember, you\u2019re not smart enough. If you think you\u2019re here to fix Sherlock Holmes, you\u2019ll get your arse handed to you. Sherlock Holmes, as a concept, is simply cleverer than all the people who have ever written it, or ever will. Except Conan Doyle, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ignore that, and that\u2019s when \u201cSherlock fatigue\u201d will set in \u2013 when we start to diminish the thing that made the character compelling in the first place: his mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1893, in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes\u2019s older brother, Mycroft.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-446064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}