“Sherlock” ran for 13 episodes across four three-part series on BBC One, from 25 July 2010 to 15 January 2017. That count includes the one-off special. It is a small body of work for a show with this much reach: 13 episodes, and the first three series hold up.
Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat created the series. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Sherlock Holmes. Martin Freeman plays Dr John Watson. The premise moves the detective stories into present-day London, and the show’s first three series drew praise for writing, acting and directing. The final series had a mixed reception.
Trailer, via Hulu.
Cumberbatch, Freeman and the 221B Baker Street flat
The casting is the show’s foundation. Moffat and executive producer Sue Vertue became interested in Cumberbatch after watching his performance in the 2007 film “Atonement.” He was cast after reading the script. Freeman’s Watson returns from military service in Afghanistan with the Royal Army Medical Corps, and the flatmate arrangement gives the series its engine.
Cumberbatch described the work plainly. “There’s a great charge you get from playing him, because of the volume of words in your head and the speed of thought—you really have to make your connections incredibly fast,” he said. “He is one step ahead of the audience and of anyone around him with normal intellect. They can’t quite fathom where his leaps are taking him.”
That speed is the whole performance. This Holmes is not Doyle’s Holmes. The series models him as a charismatic secondary psychopath, or a “high-functioning sociopath,” as Sherlock calls himself. Screen Rant and a PhD thesis from De Montfort University both note that Cumberbatch’s version is more anti-social and cruel to the people around him than Doyle’s, which makes the policemen who use his services dislike him more.
Piers Wenger, head of drama at BBC Cymru Wales, put the show’s own thesis well: “a dynamic superhero in a modern world, an arrogant, genius sleuth driven by a desire to prove himself cleverer than the perpetrator and the police—everyone in fact.”
Moriarty, Lestrade and the recurring cast
The supporting structure holds up. The recurring roles include:
- Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty, Holmes’s archenemy and the show’s recurring conflict
- Rupert Graves as Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, initially suspicious of Holmes and eventually persuaded by his intellect and observation
- Louise Brealey as Molly Hooper, a pathologist at Barts Hospital who assists on cases
- Una Stubbs as Mrs Hudson, the landlady
- Mark Gatiss as Mycroft, Holmes’s elder brother
The production choices matter as much as the cast. The series was filmed primarily in Cardiff. North Gower Street in London supplied exterior shots for the 221B Baker Street residence. The show replaced the pipe with multiple nicotine patches, a change the source ties to shifting social attitudes and broadcasting regulations.
Moffat said the writers believed Sherlock should not talk like “a completely modern person,” but were initially set on him never sounding like he was giving a lecture. In the second series, Moffat turned the character “more Victorian,” leaning on Cumberbatch’s voice.
The schedule, and the special that broke it
Thirteen episodes were produced in total: four three-part series plus a one-off special that aired on 1 January 2016.
| Episode | Air date |
|---|---|
| Series 1 premiere | 25 July 2010 |
| Victorian special | 1 January 2016 |
| Series 4 finale | 15 January 2017 |
The special is the outlier worth naming. It is set in the Victorian period as a fantasy resembling the original Holmes stories, which lets the show test its own premise against the source material it updated.
The series was produced by the BBC with Hartswood Films. Moffat, Gatiss, Vertue and Rebecca Eaton were executive producers. WGBH-TV Boston supported it for PBS’s “Masterpiece,” where it aired in the United States.
What the awards and the last series tell us
“Sherlock” was nominated for numerous awards, including Emmys, BAFTAs and a Golden Globe, and won several across a variety of categories before its final series. At the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards it won in three categories, among them Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for Cumberbatch and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. The source does not name the winner of the supporting-actor award.
The final series is where the record gets complicated. The first three drew praise; the fourth had a mixed reception. That split is the honest summary of the show.
The weak point is proportion. Thirteen episodes over a run that began in 2010 and ended in 2017, with a feature-length special in the middle, means every series arrives with more weight on it than a normal drama carries. When a three-part run misfires, there is no filler episode to absorb it. The show’s scarcity is its signature and its liability.
What matters most is the casting decision and the self-description. “High-functioning sociopath” gave the series a character who could be cruel without the show apologizing for him, and the awards record reflects that run of acclaim. The Victorian special is the second thing worth keeping: in this paper’s view, a controlled experiment that showed the update was a choice, not a necessity.
“Sherlock” is not the definitive Holmes, and nothing in the record says it is the most influential recent one. It is 13 episodes that hold up better than most long-running series manage.
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