12 Foreign TV Versions of Sherlock Holmes, Including ‘Blind Sherlock’
Think you’ve seen many Sherlock Holmeses and John (or Joan) Watsons on American and British TV? You might be surprised to know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective games have been afoot in television adaptations all over the world.
The Netherlands is offering a new take on Holmes this month, with the crime drama Blind Sherlock hitting Netflix on Friday, January 23. As you’ll see below, that show might be Sherlockian in name only, but other international versions of the master detective have been more faithful. Below, scope out a chronology of small-screen Sherlocks from around the globe.
Sherlock Holmes (Germany)
For this 1967 series adapted from a BBC Sherlock Holmes production, stage actor Erich Schellow played the sleuth as “highly intelligent but a clean character” and “a contrast to the other, action-orientated heroes of the 1960s” the actor said in 1992, as David Stuart Davies reported in Starring Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes (Italy)
In 1968, while Peter Cushing was filming scenes as Sherlock Holmes for British TV movies, Nando Gazzolo was doing so for an Italian series, and he gave the consulting detective a touch of James Bond, Alan Barnes observed in Sherlock Holmes on Screen. “Like all indolent people, when Holmes moves, he really moves,” the actor explained.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (USSR)
From 1979 to 1987, Vasily Livanov appeared as Sherlock Holmes and Vitaly Solomin played Dr. Watson in a series of Soviet television movies. The two actors were chosen for “the Englishness of their appearance” and their resemblance to Sidney Paget’s classic illustrations of the Conan Doyle stories, according to Davies.
Sherlock Hound (Japan & Italy)
Holmes became a fox terrier, Watson a Skye terrier, and Moriarty a vulpine villain in this 1984 anime series from Japan. Alongside adaptations of Conan Doyle’s “The Speckled Band” and “The Blue Carbuncle” came original adventures starring the anthropomorphized canines.
Sherlock Holmes (Russia)
In 2016, Igor Petrenko played the character on Russian TV as the star of an eight-part series. His Holmes “is something between Robert Downey Jr. and Jonny Lee Miller,” said the Baker Street Babes in a review of the production. “He’s a bit manic, hyperactive and scruffy, a bit too full of himself at times, quick-witted, and has a playful side.”
Miss Sherlock (Japan)
Conan Doyle’s stories got transplanted to modern-day Tokyo for this 2018 adaptation, starring Yûko Takeuchi as Sherlock and Shihori Kanjiya as Wato a.k.a. “Wato-san.” (Get it?) “Miss Sherlock isn’t a total reversion to Sir Conan Doyle’s most civilized characterization, but the season does crucially restore Dr. Watson’s friendship with Sherlock Holmes to something resembling its original fondness,” wrote The Ringer’s Justin Charity.
Sherlock Jr. (Philippines)
Conan Doyle probably wouldn’t have understood how he inspired this 2018 love-triangle drama. Sherlock “Jack” Jackson Jr. (Ruru Madrid) plays an investigative reporter looking into the trouble that beset his girlfriend and her friend… while developing feelings for the latter. “Sherlock Jr. is all set not only to pique viewers’ interests with its thought-provoking storyline filled with action, mystery, and drama, but also to show how love and family are some of life’s greatest joys,” says the Philippines’ GMA Network.
Sherlock: Untold Stories (Japan)
2019 gave us a different Japanese TV adaptation of the story, with Dean Fujioka playing Shishio Homare and Takanori Iwata as Junichi Wakamiya, and the duo returned in the 2022 film The Hound of the Baskervilles: Sherlock the Movie. “I’m practicing the violin every day, in order to respect the original story as much as possible, Fujioka said in a Fuji Television interview. “Sherlock is also known as a master of boxing, and as I like action, this is perfect for me.”
Case File nº221: Kabukicho (Japan)
In another 2019 production, Japan revisited the Conan Doyle tale in an anime series in which Sherlock and Watson are two crime-solvers in a ragtag group of detectives working out of a tenement run by Mrs. Hudson. “The curtain has risen on this stage on the night when a bizarre murder by Jack the Ripper has occurred,” the logline adds. “Is this suspense? No, comedy? An indistinguishable drama is about to begin…”
Sherlock in Russia (Russia)
Maksim Matveyev played Holmes in a 2020 television series in which the sleuth follows Jack the Ripper from London to Saint Petersburg. “The plot is based on exciting and mysterious crimes that Sherlock would never have encountered in his native England,” producer Alexander Remizov explained, per Komsomolskaya Pravda. “We will show the viewer a story familiar to everyone, but from a different perspective.”
Shekhar Home (India)
In 2024 came an Indian television series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories, with Kay Kay Menon playing the title brainiac. “Breezy and irreverent, Shekhar Home’s attitude is best captured by its high-performing hero’s high-pitched giggle whenever a breakthrough occurs,” Scroll.in critic Nandini Ramnath wrote. “Even the prospect of world destruction — or the annihilation of Kolkata at any rate — cannot douse the perennial twinkle in Shekhar’s eye.”
Blind Sherlock (Netherlands)
2026 is getting a new riff on the Sherlock Holmes story with this based-on-a-true-story Dutch crime series with Bart Kelchtermans playing Roman Mertens, a blind member of a Rotterdam wiretapping police team. “What we really like about the premise of this show is that it is a cop show with a very unexpected hero,” said Ivy Vanhaecke, the scripted chief at production company DeMensen, per Deadline. “Our society has a narrow vision of what ‘talent’ means. Only ‘normal’ people count, but as Roman, the Blind Sherlock, demonstrates, there’s a hero inside of everyone.”
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