Sherlock Holmes, Granada Television (1984–1994)
Jeremy Brett, forty-one episodes, and the stories told straight in period.
Take the stories at their word — the period, the cadence, the friendship — and trust that they hold up on screen.
You want the stories on screen in their own period and their own words, and you have weeks to spend in Baker Street.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the canon’s manner: Victorian London, the stories’ own plots under their own titles, and a Holmes who is difficult in the ways Conan Doyle wrote him.
Changes: as little as television allows. Over ten years it went through four series titles and two Watsons, David Burke and Edward Hardwicke.
Whose story is it?
Holmes’s, played by Jeremy Brett as a man whose brilliance costs him something.
How much time does it ask?
41 episodes broadcast 1984–1994; the complete DVD set runs about 43 hours.
ITV’s own complete collection lists thirteen episodes of The Adventures, thirteen of The Return, nine of The Case-Book and six of The Memoirs. Developed for television by John Hawkesworth.
Where to find it
The complete series on DVD — Amazon
Other ways to get it: Find where it’s streaming — JustWatch
Common questions
How many episodes of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes are there?
Forty-one, broadcast between 1984 and 1994 under four series titles: The Adventures (13), The Return (13), The Case-Book (9) and The Memoirs (6), per ITV's own complete-collection listing. The complete DVD set runs about 43 hours.
More versions: Sherlock (BBC, 2010–2017) · Sherlock Holmes (2009) and A Game of Shadows (2011) · The Basil Rathbone films (1939–1946)