If you try to fix Holmes, you'll get your arse handed to you': do we really need another Sherlock remake?

Mycroft appears in 1893 as Sherlock Holmes’s older brother, and modern audiences now encounter Sherlock almost everywhere. New spin-offs and series continue to extend the character’s timeline in multiple directions, including prequels, sequels, and side stories. Recent projects include Young Sherlock, an Enola Holmes threequel, Sherlock & Daughter, and a rumored third film starring Robert Downey Jr. Sky announced The Death of Sherlock Holmes, a six-part series featuring an amnesiac Holmes in the Swiss Alps. The franchise’s growth is linked to modern adaptations that brought Holmes into contemporary settings, alongside films, streaming series, and animated versions. The question becomes whether demand has peaked, though long-running adaptation history suggests appetite remains.

"It fills in one of the detective's last remaining narrative blind spots and raises an inevitable question: have we finally reached Sherlock saturation point? Cumberbatch's Holmes in 221B Baker Street, with his Watson (Martin Freeman) at the laptop Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy The evidence says yes and it has been piling up for more than a decade, ever since Guy Ritchie made his first Sherlock Holmes film and Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat enlisted Benedict Cumberbatch to bring the detective into the modern day."

"This year has already given us Prime Video's Young Sherlock, with an Enola Holmes threequel on the way, work beginning on a second series of Sherlock & Daughter, starring David Thewlis, and fresh rumours of Robert Downey Jr dusting off the deerstalker for a third big-screen adventure. Earlier this month, Sky also announced The Death of Sherlock Holmes, a six-part series starring Rafe Spall as an amnesiac Holmes forced to deduce his own identity high in the Swiss Alps."

"Since then, we've had Ian McKellen's Mr Holmes, Netflix's The Irregulars, even the animated oddity Sherlock Gnomes. Add this latest influx to the pile and we're surely at critical mass. Aren't we? Oh, I don't know, says Moffat. There's always been adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, now for over 100 years, and there doesn't seem to be any stopping it, or any loss of appetite."

"When his BBC Sherlock arrived in 2010, it did so between Ritchie's period-blockbuster versions. Very "

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