Why Sherlock Holmes remains the original crime-fighting superhero

When Herbert Greenough Smith, editor of The Strand magazine, was sent the first batch of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in 1891, his reaction was ecstatic and telling: “Here was a new and gifted story-writer. There was no mistaking the ingenuity of plot, the limpid clearness of style, the perfect art of telling a story.”

Smith was right to be excited. Before you could say, “Elementary, my dear Watson” – ironically, a line never intoned by Holmes in the books but created for TV – the Baker Street detective became a household name. His ingenuity makes him the original crimefighting superhero whose fame endures more than 130 years after his birth.

On the day a new Holmes story was due to be published, readers would queue at newsstands to get the latest copy of The Strand hot off the presses. And fans have been responding to Sherlock Holmes in their millions ever since.

The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of the most celebrated of Conan Doyle’s tales, is 120 this year, yet Holmes’ stature as themost popular fictional character on the planet shows no sign of waning. The detective, who famously lives at 221B Baker Street, is so renowned as to be recognised by his distinctive aquiline profile – sporting a deerstalker hat and a Meerschaum pipe – alone. Colin Baker, best known for playing Doctor Who, takes on the role of Holmes in a new stage production of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

“A bit like The Doctor, Sherlock Holmes is one of those fictional creations who has simply become part of our culture,” he explains. “Even more than The Doctor, people actually think he’s real. Americans queue up at 221B Baker Street and wait outside for his autograph.”

The sleuth, whose cases are chronicled in four full-length novels and 56 short stories, ostensibly by his loyal sidekick Dr Watson, holds the Guinness World Record for the most frequently portrayed fictional human character in film and TV history.

Since appearing in 1900 in Sherlock Holmes Baffled, a onereel film that lasts for less than aminute, his tales of breathtaking detection have been brought to the screen an eye-watering 254 times, 48 more than his nearest rival, Hamlet.

The detective has been played on screen, stage and radio by actors as diverse as Sir Ian McKellen, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Robert Downey Jr, Leonard Nimoy, John Cleese, Christopher Lee, Peter Cook, Charlton Heston, Stewart Granger, Sir Roger Moore, Christopher Plummer, Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Peter O’Toole and Alexander Armstrong.

There have been many very successful long-running screen interpretations of Holmes, starring performers such as Basil Rathbone (1939 to 1946), Jeremy Brett (1984 to 1994) and Jonny Lee Miller in US version (2012 to 2019).

Perhaps most memorably, writer-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss enjoyed enormous global success with a modern-day adaptation entitled simply Sherlock from 2010 to 2017. The series made Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman stars worldwide. In Gatiss’ view, Sherlock worked so well because it embraced the joy inherent in the original yarns.

“I think more than anything, what people have responded to is the fun of the show, which is so much what Doyle’s stories were actually like,” he said.

“Over years and years of accumulating various versions and Victoriana, people had slightly lost sight of the fact that they’re enormous fun! They’re quick reads, they’re jolly thrilling, blood-curdling adventures and really, that’s what we wanted to do.”

Holmes has also inspired some quite bizarre spin-offs. In the 1971 film They Might Be Giants, disturbed man thinks he is Holmes. In an attempt to cure him, his psychiatrist pretends to be Watson. Meanwhile in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution from 1976, Holmes receives treatment for a cocaine addiction from none other than Sigmund Freud.

The character enjoyed an unusual iteration as a sleuthing rodent in The Great Mouse Detective (1986), too. He even starred in episodes of both Scooby-Doo and Alvin and the Chipmunks – a sure sign that a character has made it on the global stage.

Quite simply, the world’s first and most famous consulting detective is a cultural phenomenon. Beyond film, TV and radio, Holmes has featured in comic books, video games, cartoons, board games, musicals and a ballet – 2000’s Duke Ellington Meets Sherlock Holmes, since you ask. In 2002, progressive rock musicians Clive Nolan and Oliver Wakeman produced a concept album called The Hound of the Baskervilles.

There is even a Sherlock Holmes claret? The Holmes Industry shows no signs of slowing down. This Christmas, London theatre-goers are being treated to a mashup of Dickens and Doyle. In A Sherlock Carol, a new play at the Marylebone Theatre, near Baker Street, Tiny Tim begs Holmes to examine the unexplained death of his former benefactor Ebenezer Scrooge.

The new stage production of perhaps Holmes’ most adored story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, will also be touring this autumn. The twist is that the actors playing Holmes and Watson are best known for playing mortal enemies on Doctor Who.

For several years, Colin Baker and Terry Molloy portrayed The Doctor and Davros, the megalomaniac ruler of the Daleks.

Now, they are teaming up to tackle an kerville Hall equally dastardly foe at Baskerville Hall. So why, more than 130 years after his creation, is Holmes still the world’s best-loved literary figure? Writer-director Martin Parsons argues that, despite Holmes having some dislikeable traits, people can’t help but warm to him.

“There are so many aspects of Holmes’ character that we shouldn’t like,” he smiles. “He’s pompous, sometimes rude and cold. But nevertheless, people love him. He is quintessentially British. There is also something of the superhero about him.”

Viewers and readers are also spellbound by Holmes’ otherworldly powers of deduction. Nils Clausson, author of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Art of Fiction: A Revaluation, says: “At the centre of the myth of Holmes is the iconic image of the man with a magnifying glass, the brilliant detective who uses reason, science, logic and acute observation to solve mysteries that appear to everyone else, especially the amiable and admiring Watson and obtuse and bureaucratic Scotland Yard inspectors, to be unsolvable.

“This is the supercilious Holmes who confidently intones, “Elementary, my dear Watson” in countless stage and film adaptations (though never in the stories).”

Those superpowers have a cost attached, however. “Even outside the world of detection, I think Doyle began the idea that super-intelligence comes at the price of some kind of social dysfunction, something that we’ve grasped as a narrative possibility ever since,” says Steven Moffatt. “He’s a genius, therefore he’s a bit strange. I don’t know how often that happens in real life, but it happens a lot in fiction.”

Author Anthony Horowitz, who, in 2011 with the backing of the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote the first of two Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk, thinks, in weighing up the lasting impact of the stories, we should not underestimate the importance of Dr. Watson.

“If I were to put my finger on the endurance of Doyle’s work, it wouldn’t be the mysteries, as satisfying as they are. Nor would it even be the character of Holmes, brilliant though it is. What I have always loved has been the relationship between Holmes and Watson, which must surely rank as the greatest friendship in English literature: Watson so stolid, so warm, so well meaning.”

He continues: “It’s hard to say which of the two creations is more brilliant, but the truth is that they are inseparable. We cannot admire Holmes without Watson. I’m not sure we would even like him.”

It is true that Watson humanises Holmes. He also plays a key role in helping the detective unlock the mysteries. The other mark of Holmes’ long-lasting greatness is the fact that he has influenced every subsequent fictional detective.

“Everything onwards is people drawing a line from Sherlock and Doctor Watson,” says Mark Gatiss. “Agatha Christie does it explicitly. Poirot needs a Watson, so she creates Captain Hastings. Everywhere you go, this is the model.”

The irony is that Doyle, believing writing detective stories was beneath him, attempted to kill off Holmes. He remarked: “I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards paté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.” In 1891, the author wrote a letter to his mother, explaining, “I think of slaying Holmes? and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.”

She replied: “You won’t! You can’t! You mustn’t!” But the author ignored his mother’s advice and, in his 1893 story The Final Problem, Holmes plunged to his death in the Reichenbach Falls while grappling with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty.

The public outcry took Doyle aback. Across London, young men started wearing black mourning crepes as they grieved for the loss of their beloved consulting detective. Livid that their hero had been prematurely snatched away from them, more than 20,000 Strand readers cancelled their subscriptions. One reader opened a letter to Doyle with the words: “You brute!” The magazine came close to folding and its staff branded Holmes’ death “The dreadful event”.

The public fury obliged Doyle to bring Holmes back from the dead. He returned in 1902 in The Hound of the Baskervilles. The world will be eternally grateful that the author resurrected Holmes. As Martin Parsons puts it: “The more the world is in trouble, the more people need escapism and want to share experiences like the Sherlock Holmes stories.”

So there you have it, the enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes. It’s elementary, my dear reader.

For details of the national tour of The Hound Of The Baskervilles, visit crimeandcomedytheatrecompany.co.uk/dates