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Mein 1893, in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, Arthur Conan Doyle explained Sherlock Holmes’ brother, Mycroft. Meeting Dr Watson for the first time, Mycroft shakes his hand and sighs: “I’ve been hearing about Sherlock everywhere since you became his biographer.”
Leave us an idea for all of us, Mycroft. A hundred years later, Sherlock Holmes he has accomplished almost everything that would astonish even the most senior detective – unleashing a series of transformations that stretch his life backwards, forwards and sideways.
This year he has already given it to us Young Sherlock Movieand a Enola Holmes threequels on the way, work on the second series of Sherlock & Daughter, starring David Thewlis, and new rumors of Robert Downey Jr ditching the deerstalker for a third big-screen outing.
Earlier this month, Sky also announced The Death of Sherlock Holmes, a six-part series featuring the star. Rafe Spall as an amnesiac Holmes is forced to expose himself in the Swiss Alps. It fills in one last spot for the detective – and raises the inevitable question: have we reached the end of Sherlock?
The evidence says yes – and 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 to the present day. Since then, we have had it Ian McKellen’s HolmesNetflix’s The Irregulars, even odder Sherlock Gnomes. Add the latest addition to the pile and we’re in serious trouble. Isn’t it?
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Moffat. “There’s always been change Sherlock Holmes, now for more than 100 years, and it seems that nothing can stop this, or lose the passion.” When his BBC Sherlock arrived in 2010, it was among the Ritchie-blockbuster genres. “They are very different, but they are all Sherlock,” adds the author. I expected to be jealous or competitive with those movies, but then I loved them.
Moffat recently worked with Holmes co-star Rafe Spall on the political drama Number 10which will air on Channel 4 later this year, so he already knows something new. “(Spall) told me the idea, and I think it’s very smart,” he says. “A new original recording, it’s never been – I think – done before. I can’t wait to see it.”
A new take? It seems impossible. But even if it’s impossible, it’s worth taking Moffat’s credit for. And the reformation, after all, is linked to the nature of the police officer. After sending Holmes over the falls, Conan Doyle himself was the first to resurrect him – convinced by fans to bring him back in The Adventure of the Empty House. In Conan Doyle’s writings, he was resurrected only once; in evolution, he has returned again and again, each repetition straying from the source.
But the cleaners will take their Sherlock even when he comes. Calvert Markham, chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, said: “The joy is that Holmes continues to promote an original work that we can all enjoy.” Reinterpretation does not bother traditionalists, he adds, as long as they respect and acknowledge the original text. Before Cumberbatch’s transition, for example, Moffat and Gatiss discussed it with the public. “And he recognized the nuances of the canon.”
This, Markham believes, is why Holmes is not only enduring but enjoying a new season of change. Conan Doyle wrote nearly 700,000 words (four novels and 56 short stories), filling them with characters so rich and memorable that – even when they’ve been gender-swapped, merged or distorted beyond recognition – they still stand.
Markham says: “Holmes and Watson are the main characters, but there are also some minor characters: Irene Adler, Professor Moriarty, Mycroft Holmes.
This is the basis of it. Just look at Young Sherlock, starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin. Based on several books by Andrew Lane, the show was renewed for a second series and is one of Prime Video’s top 10 shows. In the US, after all Basics — starring Jonny Lee Miller as a sleuth — ran for seven years on CBS, executive producer Craig Sweeny created it. Watsona medical mystery drama that ended earlier this month. When it first started last year, Watson was given a “straight-line” plan instead of showing itself with the pilot section.
“The Sherlock Holmes genre is marketable,” explains Sam Naidu, professor of English at Rhodes University and editor of the anthology Sherlock Holmes in Context. In fact, the stressful times we live in may mean that many people want to change. “This instability creates a safe, comforting, familiar image of thought and order,” he says. “Holmes continues to offer the comfort of solved cases, the restoration of order and the triumph of good over evil. Faced with the earthquakes of social and political change, the world needs to be reassured clearly by the convincing story of a successful detective.”
And Holmes has done well. Unlike “extreme fatigue”, the need for behavior only increases. Regent’s Park Open Air Theater in London opened its 2026 season this month with Sherlock Holmes and Joel Horwood. A video game released last year, The Beekeeper’s Picnic, allowed players to step into the shoes of a detective. “The scene continues and evolves and evolves,” says Naidu, citing continuity and expansion, from Ryōsuke Takeuchi’s manga series to, unexpectedly, the Mycroft Holmes trilogy of books by former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (and Anna Waterhouse). “These ongoing writings,” he adds, “show that original stories are strong enough to produce new characters, new storylines, alternate fantasy worlds and subversive themes.”
It all goes back to Conan Doyle, then. Sherlock perseveres – and will continue to do so – because he’s so well-known to begin with, his world so well-constructed that we still want to explore its shadowy corners. He was a prolific intellectual even in the 1890s, when readers spent a decade wanting him back, and we’re still looking for new cases. Moffat thinks we will continue to do so, as long as we don’t expand or change the story too much.
“The thing about Sherlock Holmes,” says Moffat, “is that the character is smarter than you. You look at the character, you check the rules, and you do what you’re told. Yes, you try and push sometimes – it’s good. But big? Leave it. Remember, you’re not smart enough. If you think you’re here to fix Sherlock Holmes’s hand. Holmes, as a concept, is smarter than anyone who has ever written, or will, Except Conan Doyle, of course.
Ignore this, and that’s when “Sherlock fatigue” will set in – when we start to diminish the very thing that made the character so compelling in the first place: his mystery.
