“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.” – Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1892)

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As a teenager, I became obsessed with Sherlock Holmes.

Not only because I adored the Guy Ritchie’s film adaptation and read the stories, but also because I was a teenage girl. On the trip to Sweden after the death of my mother, I read a book with a red cover that was about the fighting styles and truths of the time that Sherlock Holmes was set in. I first was introduced to the character when I was ten years old when Robert Downey Jr. portrayed him on the screen, then again at twelve years old with the books, and then thirteen with the BBC miniseries. I was late to the party to say the least; he had been around since 1887. Sherlock Holmes was a fictional creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a man with a genius mind, a drug addiction, a predilection for the violin, and a nose for solving crime. The books and short stories are from the point of view of his companion and crime-solving colleague, Dr. Watson. He goes with his friend and flat mate on various cases wherein Sherlock acts as a “consulting detective.” From the smallest scuff on a shoe or a loose thread on a shirt, he would be able to conclude where someone was from, their profession, and a myriad of other details. He is a perfect detective, but an imperfect man. He is not known for being interested in relationships of any kind and being emotionally abusive at times to those around him. He is also known for being a severe drug addict. He solves crimes involving everything from simple theft, to hunting down leaked pornography for royalty, to uncovering human trafficking rings. He is one of the best characters in fiction to ever exist. He has been adapted into probably half a million times into shows, films, graphic novels, animes, short stories, and at least 10,000 fanfictions on Archive of Our Own (AO3). We will be looking at one of these adaptations: the BBC series starring Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. It is Sherlock Holmes in the modern day. He loves smart phones and quips. You can look up “Sherlock insulting people” on YouTube and get hundreds of hits. It is not the purest expression of the character, but we will be using the portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the show Sherlock (2010) for this essay, for several reasons…

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