Which Holmes did it best?

If anyone has mastered the art of writing prose dryer than a digestive biscuit, it is surely Arthur Conan Doyle. Almost ruthlessly purged of any semblance of wit, Doyle's Dr Watson lulls his readers to sleep, almost as if parading as a general anaesthetic, by giving a duller-than-dishwater account of his adventures with one of fiction's biggest detective hotshots, Sherlock Holmes.

The dullness of Doyle

If you have any doubts as to Watson's passion for spreading boredom far and wide, you are invited to study this riveting opening passage from A Study in Scarlet:

"In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out."

(For those of you who did not dose off after 'year', please dig out a copy of A Study in Scarlet in your own time and look up paragraph number 2 if you are still seeking a sleeping aid.)

Fortunately, however, we live in a world where those in the business of regaling us with film and television are immune to Doyle's dogged efforts to anaesthetise through words. No one who loves a good juicy murder will have ever complained of there being a dearth of Sherlock Holmes-oriented content on TV. As a tribute to these brave filmmakers and actors, let us take a closer look at three onscreen adaptations of Doyle's immortal (against all odds) literature.

'Watson' (2025)

Watson combines the two things that a certain echelon of TV viewers holds dear: murder and medicine. Set in present-day Pittsburgh in America, Dr John Watson runs a medical practice where he treats patients with strange and unidentifiable issues. One year ago, his dear friend Sherlock Holmes perished at the hands of his archnemesis, Moriarty, who was also supposed to have been finished off in the same fight. However, because every Moriarty in every fictional universe is like that pesky cockroach unperturbed by a nuclear holocaust, our latest Watson must face his past when undeniable evidence surfaces that Moriarty may, sadly, still be alive. Alongside this troubling factoid, Watson must also continue to treat his patients – although because his time with his beloved Holmes was not wasted, he uses his dear departed friend's deductive reasoning to get to the root cause of whatever rare disorders are ailing his patients.

As you will have deduced from this little summary, Watson is more of an upgraded version of House MD and has less to do with Holmes than almost any Holmes adaptations to date – a conclusion that has not escaped the unforgiving eye of your average IMDb reviewer.

"It is so much a rip-off of House MD that frankly, it gets embarrassing to watch. Even the music is exactly as in House. Oh, and Morris Chestnut is not the right guy to play any kind of smart doctor," writes one commenter. "It's not all bad, though. The writing and acting are not awful, the story moves along as it should... there is some potential, despite the bad decisions they made at conception."

"Not all bad" and "not awful" may not be quite the response that producer and series creator Craig Sweeny may have been aiming for, so whether or not Watson hangs around long enough to merit a second season remains to be seen. The odds look slim.

'Enola Holmes' (2020)

Set in the late 1800s and turning the spotlight on Sherlock's younger sister, Enola Homes is everything a modern Holmes film for kids (and like-minded adults) should be: fresh, engaging, not preachy, with a loveable female protagonist who grates on nobody's nerves.

After enjoying a free-spirited childhood, 16-year-old Enola Holmes is on the brink of being packed away to a boarding school for young ladies where she is to be taught things like manners. Determined to avoid this dreadful fate, and equally determined to hunt down her mother, who appears to have vanished of her own accord in the dead of night, Enola runs away from home and play super sleuth across London. This running away from home business is even easier than it sounds, for Enola is in the care of her aloof older brothers, who have little interest in either their missing mother or the whereabouts of their younger sister.

One of these brothers, of course, is Sherlock, played by the dashing Henry Cavill. Lovers of eye candy will have had their hopes dashed when they learn how pathetically little screen time Cavill gets. However, since this is really a coming-of-age story about Enola, Cavill's lack of screen presence is justified. Can Enola outwit her famous detective brother, find her mother, find young love, defeat a terrifying dowager and undo the changes that are about to set back the course of women's rights? You are a fool if you believe any of this is beyond our heroine's remit, and the joy lies in just how she does it.

'Sherlock' (2010-1017)

Because the best must always be saved for last, there is no escaping this definitive quirky version of Doyle's works. Sherlock does almost everything a book fan would abhor: it upgrades everything to the present day, defies canon by referring to its eponymous hero by his first name as opposed to his surname, and calls its first episode A Study in Pink rather than sticking to Doyle's appointed title A Study in Scarlet. As if this was not scandalous enough, it even turns a crucial plot point completely on its head when Sherlock et al examine the actual murder scene.

Fortunately, none of this matters, because series creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat were able to dust off the dry fluff littering Doyle's prose and get to the heart of his life's work. Without their peerless efforts, we would never have known the true ingenuity of London criminals, the richness of Sherlock's mind palace, and the bond between detective and sidekick that comes dangerously close to reducing to tears anyone who does not possess a heart of stone. Despite whatever viewers have to say about the final season (this is a Mentos-in-Coke situation, with opinions cleaving fans neatly in two), there is no denying that Benedict Cumberbatch and his dark curly hair filled a Sherlock-shaped hole in our lives we did not know we had.

Not only are we gifted a watertight script, a musical score that doubles as the aural equivalent of Sherlock's copious ego, camera work that scythes right to the point, and a flawless performance by both main and supporting cast, this is a gem that is unlikely to ever be superseded by any future Doyle adaptation. Not even Robert Downey Jr's Holmes in Elementary – much more faithful to Doyle's actual works – has a hope of coming close.