Elementary is a) the best Sherlock adaptation, and b) such an absolute delight to watch, 10000/10 do watch highly rec (ALSO has Lucy Liu dressed like this and come on COME ON)
I was going to bring up the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes but of course those are less adaptations and more "Sherlock Holmes on TV instead of on the page."
I don't know if this is actually true but I have a theory that Brett + Granada loom so large over the character (even decades on) that he's why you don't see any "Holmes played straight" productions being done with any kind of cultural force behind them.
Action! Holmes. Neurodivergent! Holmes. Lucy Liu! Watson. The Adventurous Younger Sister! Holmes. But if you want, you know, Sherlock Holmes, you just put on Jeremy Brett.
Oh, I have no beef with the other Holmes(es?). A character that big is going to have a million different shapes. I just take the (ex galerum) position that hardly anyone has tried just regular period Sherlock Holmes because hardly anybody can beat what Brett et al. did.
This year I'm using Cheng Xiaoqing's SHERLOCK IN SHANGHAI in my World Lit class - Cheng was a huge Chinese Sherlockian and did some of the first translations, then wrote a few short stories featuring a legally-distinct-but-obviously-Holmes-and-Watson in 1920s Shanghai. Have to see how it goes.
