3 Best Sherlock Holmes Series to Watch if You Miss the BBC Version

BBC’s hit drama Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch as the worldwide famous detective completely altered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon by dragging his characters out of the 19th century and throwing them into modern-day London, giving the viewers a new and compelling point of view.

The show has been gone for a while, and though there are constant talks about Sherlock’s revival or at least cast and crew reunion, nothing like this is likely to hit the screens in the not so distant future. However, fans of both original books and the series might find joy in other TV versions of the same story — and not all of them are as classic as Conan Doyle’s collection.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson

Starring Vasiliy Livanov as Sherlock Holmes and Vitaliy Solomin as Dr. Watson, the Russian series of movies was a major hit in the motherland and even in the UK where Livanov was given an honorary award for achievements in performing arts.

The films, the first one of which was released back in 1979, adapted Conan Doyle’s novels like “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” “A Study in Scarlet” and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, which come as some of the best stories about Sherlock Holmes in the author’s vast collection of the detective’s adventures.

Split into several episodes, each of the five movies tends to be a mini-series, but it’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson that has deserved the status of a fan-favorite over the decades.

Miss Sherlock

Conan Doyle’s story has seen many bold alterations throughout the years, but even BBC’s Sherlock can’t compare to the Japanese version where girl power is everything. Just like the Cumberbatch-led show, Miss Sherlock is a modernized version, though now the whole storyline unfolds in modern-day Tokyo where Sara "Sherlock" Futaba works as a consulting detective and solves all kinds of mysteries accompanied by her friend and flatmate Dr. Wato Tachibana.

Another major difference that alienates the series from its source material is that Miss Sherlock isn’t really based on Conan Doyle’s novels, with the show inventing mysterious events on its own. Despite that, Miss Sherlock is still a solid watch for Sherlock Holmes’ fans that will be completely blown away by the cast’s outstanding performance.

Elementary

Another major transformation of a cult classic, Elementary takes its viewers to (once again) modern-day New York where Sherlock Holmes (Lee Miller), now a former Scotland Yard inspector trying to get over his long-standing drug addiction, works alongside the NYPD giving them clues to mysterious events in the city.

Holmes also gets some help from Dr. Joan Watson, an original John Watson’s female version portrayed by Lucy Liu, who gradually discovers her own passion for solving crimes. Fans might also be fascinated by the fact that the show stars Natalie Dormer as gender-swapped, yet still purely evil Jamie Moriarty.