Ever since his first appearance on the page, Holmes has frequently been portrayed on stage and screen, with almost every decade offering new adaptations, adventures, and directions. It was Conan Doyle himself who initially penned the first Holmes-based drama, with his efforts later becoming the basis for William Gillette’s play, Sherlock Holmes (1899). Unlike the books and stories in which much of Holmes is left to the reader’s imagination, on screen in particular he is presented as a complete package—faults and all. While some portrayals are easily forgotten, many of the best, such as those of Rathbone, Cushing, Brett, and Cumberbatch have become the living embodiment of the great detective for successive generations.

Originally written by Conan Doyle, the final version was reworked by William Gillette, who also directed and starred in the play. The story was based on material drawn from the canon, and despite Conan Doyle’s original misgivings, he consented to allow Holmes to be married. For Holmesians, this play marks an influential adaptation, since it introduced the detective’s now iconic bent briar pipe and his frequent use of a magnifying glass, and included the line, “Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow.”

This was a series of short, silent films, each based on one of Conan Doyle’s original stories; most are now lost. They starred English actor Eille Norwood, who, from the age of 60, made 47 films between 1921 and 1923, and was famous for his sharp features and piercing eyes. The films all stayed close to the originals, although there was no attempt at Victoriana—all were set in a London in which electricity, cars, and buses were the norm.

This was the first sound-era Holmes movie—a so-called “talkie.” Paramount Pictures owned the rights to the characters of Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty but not to any specific story, so an original piece was concocted by borrowing various ideas from Conan Doyle. The movie presented the first of many dim-witted Watsons (here played by H. Reeves-Smith), and began with a murder via a trick cigarette case with a lethal needle—a device that Moriarty (Harry T. Morey) later tried to use on Holmes (Clive Brook). The closing lines of the movie also gave another first for Holmes: his trademark phrase, “Elementary, my dear Watson,” which was never uttered in the canon itself.

This movie marked the first of Basil Rathbone’s fourteen outings as Holmes, establishing him as one of the key actors in the role. Watson was portrayed as likable but buffoonish by Nigel Bruce, with Richard Greene as the romantic lead, Sir Henry Baskerville. This was the first movie to be set in the Victorian period, and in which the actor playing Watson received equal billing with Holmes. Although the action followed the original plot, the great spectral hound simply appeared as a large dog.

“The strange case of the chinchilla fetish! The fiendish instrument that strangles, crushes, vanishes! The albatross of doom! The British crown jewels!” As the 20th Century Fox press release suggests, this movie, starring Rathbone as Holmes, had an adventurous plot. An original piece, it was claimed to be based on Gillette’s 1899 play, Sherlock Holmes, in which Moriarty goads the detective, telling him of his plans for the crime of the century, for which Holmes would be discredited.

Starring Rathbone and Bruce as Holmes and Watson, this movie was one in a series of twelve made by Universal Studios. It was based on “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” and sees Holmes making a rare mistake—the loss of a famous, and seemingly cursed, pearl that he must then recover. The movies in the series were all made cheaply and quickly, with no attempt at period settings. They are particularly notable for the humor between Holmes and Watson, as well as their array of macabre elements. Other movies in the series include The Scarlet Claw (1944) and The Woman in Green (1945).

Lost in the mists of television history, this American series was made with the cooperation of Conan Doyle’s son Adrian, who was eager to perpetuate his father’s franchise. Holmes was played by a youthful Ronald Howard (age 39), with Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. It was filmed in France, meaning that some of the London locations appear curiously Gallic. New, non-canonical plots were utilized that took aspects from Conan Doyle’s stories, with the scripts written by blacklisted Hollywood writers working in Europe. This was the only Holmes television series produced in the US until Elementary in 2012.

This adaptation was produced by a company celebrated for its Gothic horror outings—Hammer Films. True to form, the dark, gruesome elements found in Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles are graphically translated on screen. The cast included the classic pairing of Peter Cushing as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville. The movie was directed by Hammer’s signature director, Terence Fisher, who had already reenergized the company’s Frankenstein and Count Dracula franchises. It was the first of a projected series of movies that never materialized, although Cushing played Holmes again in later years.

Directed by James Hill (better known for co-directing Born Free in 1966) this ingenious movie has Holmes hot on the trail of Jack the Ripper. The notorious murderer is terrorizing Victorian London’s East End, and the only clues are the crest of an aristocratic family and a box containing surgical instruments with the scalpel missing. Bizarrely, in the UK the movie was marketed as a violent and sexually graphic exploitation movie, while in the US it was sold as a camp, Batman-style comic-book caper. John Neville played a solid, energetic Holmes alongside Donald Houston as Watson.

Produced by the BBC, this series initially cast Douglas Wilmer as a wry and amused Holmes. Like many of his fellow actors in the role, Wilmer bore a marked resemblance to the Sidney Paget illustrations in the The Strand Magazine. He declined to do a second series, with the lead then going to Peter Cushing, himself a Holmesian, who had previously starred in Hammer’s The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1959. The series adapted many of the original stories, starting with “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” and extended to 29 episodes, the later Cushing shows being filmed in full color.

This parody film was directed by Billy Wilder, who also co-wrote it with I. A. L. Diamond. A non-canonical tale, it saw Holmes (played by Robert Stephens) and Watson (Colin Blakely), take on a particularly strange case that involved missing midgets, naval experiments, and the Loch Ness monster. Controversially for Holmes fans, it was also the first movie to feature jokes about a supposed gay relationship between Holmes and Watson. Accompanying the movie was a notably rich musical score by Miklos Rózsa, based on his own violin concerto.

An adaptation of a pastiche, this movie is based on Nicholas Meyer’s imaginative 1974 novel of the same title. It shows a cocaine- addicted Holmes becoming highly paranoid about being persecuted by mathematics expert, Professor Moriarty, who is portrayed here as a feeble, elderly man. Holmes is persuaded to follow Moriarty to Vienna, unaware that Watson and Mycroft Holmes have a hidden agenda—they want him to be treated for his addiction by the world-famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. The cast included Nicol Williamson as the blighted Holmes, Laurence Olivier as Moriarty, and Alan Arkin as Freud.

Written and directed by Paul Giovanni, this play was based on The Sign of Four. It first opened on Broadway, and employed state- of-the-art lighting to recreate the river chase scene on stage. It later opened in London and Los Angeles, where Jeremy Brett played Watson. In 1991, it was turned into a movie starring Charlton Heston.

Of the various, often outlandish, treatments of theories about the British royal family’s involvement in the Jack the Ripper killings, this was one of the most accomplished. The movie dealt with largely discredited theories about Jack’s identity, and this British/Canadian co-production boasted Christopher Plummer as an emotionally-charged incarnation of Holmes. The great detective is enlisted after the grisly dispatch of the third prostitute to die at the Ripper’s hands, “Long Liz” Stride, and discovers the involvement of the British Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and the Freemasons.

Produced by Granada Television, this adaptation ran over six series, and featured 41 episodes based on the original stories. The great detective was played by Jeremy Brett, who for many devotees is the archetypal Holmes, portraying him as deeply intense and edgy. Watson was initially played by David Burke, then later by the long-serving Edward Hardwicke. The series was immensely popular, being broadcast in the UK and the US, and is widely considered to be the most faithful representation of Conan Doyle’s stories to date. The later series produced were entitled The Return, The Casebook, and The Memoirs.

This movie marks the last appearance as Holmes by Peter Cushing, who, then 71 years old, needed persuasion to take the part. Watson was played by fellow big-screen veteran John Mills, age 76. Set in 1913, the now-retired detective is brought in by the police after bodies are found in the Thames River, their faces frozen in a rictus of terror, but with no visible causes of death. In a separate, or possibly linked, case, he is asked to find a missing prince in order to prevent war between Britain and Germany.

Written by Charles Marowitz and directed by A. J. Antoon, this play is sometimes confused with one of the same name produced by Matthew Lang in 1974. This play was a dark comedy with Holmes, played by Frank Langella, receiving death threats from the evil son of the late Moriarty, and then being imprisoned by a frustrated Watson. Marowitz added some interesting changes to the Holmes formula, and the play was well reviewed.

This play was written by Jeremy Paul, who had previously created several episodes of the Granada Television series featuring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. By the time of the play, the troubled actor had an ambiguous attitude to the character, and the results on stage were considered controversial. The drama featured just two characters, with Edward Hardwicke as Watson. Although the play received poor reviews, the actors’ performances were praised. The “secret” alluded to in the title, as in Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, was that the Machiavellian Moriarty was a concoction of Holmes’s drug-addled brain.

This is the second Holmes play written by David Stuart Davies, and as in the first, Roger Llewellyn was cast as the great detective. Rather than following a canonical tale or creating a simple pastiche, Davies explored the relationship between a fictional character and his creator. In the play, Conan Doyle is now tired of Holmes, and desperate to rid himself of his famous character, he creates the evil Moriarty to do his bidding. Holmes, of course, proves more resilient than Conan Doyle anticipated, and the adventure begins. This was an interesting play, where characters flitted between fantasy and reality.

Directed by Guy Ritchie, who is best known for his “Cockney crime” movies, this is a tongue-in-cheek rebooting of the Holmes genre that sees the detective transformed into a Hollywood-style action hero. Set in Victorian London, it is a non-canonical tale with Holmes and Watson played by Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. The plot, which has elements of science fiction and the supernatural, sees the detective pair form an unlikely alliance with former enemy Irene Adler. Together they must first save Britain, the US, and then the whole world from the late Lord Blackwood—recently raised from the dead. At the end, Adler reveals her connections to Moriarty, opening the prospect of a sequel, which followed in 2011.

Produced by the BBC, and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, and Martin Freeman as Watson, this innovative series remolded the great detective for the twenty-first century audience. Hence Holmes gains a mobile phone and GPS, but loses his famous “three-pipe problem” to multiple nicotine patches. The series co-creators, Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss, based some episodes on Conan Doyle’s originals. Existing characters, were repurposed, such as Irene Adler, here seen as a dominatrix, and new ones introduced. These included Holmes’s parents, played by Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton, the real-life parents of Benedict Cumberbatch.

This was the sequel to the 2009 movie staring Robert Downey Jr., again directed by Guy Ritchie. It has the same light-hearted, fast-paced, all-action approach as the original movie, and sees Watson having ended the detecting partnership in order to marry his sweetheart, Mary Morstan. Now working alone, Holmes uncovers a plot by Moriarty to embroil all of Europe in war, which will benefit his recently acquired munitions and arms supplies manufacturers. Naturally, the newly married Watson is soon at Holmes’s side in the case. This sequel introduced Stephen Fry as Mycroft, Holmes’s brother, and Jared Harris as a chillingly quiet Moriarty.

Set in modern-day New York, this series was produced by CBS Television Studios. Holmes, played by Jonny Lee Miller, has been sent to New York from London by his father to help him recover from his drug addiction. To watch over and support him, his father has employed a former surgeon, Dr. Joan Watson, played by Lucy Liu. Holmes’s previous detective work for Scotland Yard is known to the NYPD, which naturally makes use of his services, and Watson becomes Holmes’s new apprentice. Interestingly, this was the first Holmes television series produced in the US since Ronald Howard’s outings in 1953. Having proved popular with viewers, several series have been produced.

Starring Sir Ian McKellen as the great detective, this movie is set just after World War II. Holmes, now in his nineties and long-since retired, shies away from the fame of his younger days, wishing only to tend to his bees in solitude. Where once he battled criminals, now he fights senility, as he struggles with short-term memory loss. The movie centers on Holmes’s last case, and his annoyance at the way Watson (now deceased) embellished the facts and changed the outcome when publishing the story. Eager to set the record straight, Holmes must try to remember the events as they happened so many years before. This movie is a moving portrayal of Holmes at his most human.