Sherlock (BBC) has been highly critically acclaimed

The argument

This argument holds that the BBC's Sherlock is the best screen version of the detective because of its critical standing: among the more than 250 screen portrayals in history, it is one of the most acclaimed, showered with awards and praise that mark it as exceptional. The record of recognition is substantial. The series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman and created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, won major industry honours — multiple BAFTAs and a clutch of Emmy Awards, including acting wins for its leads and recognition for its writing — and drew strong reviews from critics who praised its intelligence, style and performances. Its central conceit, transplanting Conan Doyle's Victorian detective into a contemporary London of texts, blogs and smartphones, was widely hailed as a clever, faithful-in-spirit reinvention that captured Holmes's deductive brilliance for a modern audience, and Cumberbatch's mercurial, high-functioning detective became one of the defining screen Holmeses of the era. It was also a global phenomenon, drawing large audiences across many countries. The argument takes critical acclaim as the appropriate yardstick. With hundreds of adaptations to weigh, the most reliable external measure of quality is the verdict of professional critics and awards bodies — informed judges applying demanding standards across the field of television. A version that collects that recognition, in the quantity Sherlock did, has been independently certified as among the very best, beyond the affection of any particular fanbase. Awards and reviews aggregate expert assessment in a way personal preference cannot. From this standpoint, the adaptation most decorated by those who judge the medium has the strongest claim. Because Sherlock (BBC) has been highly critically acclaimed, this argument holds, it is the best screen version of Sherlock Holmes.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Acclaim is a real signal, but the criterion is not applied consistently here. If awards and reviews settle the question, a rival has the stronger case: Jeremy Brett's Granada series of the 1980s is the version critics most often name as the definitive screen Holmes and the most faithful to Conan Doyle's texts, while Basil Rathbone's run defined the character for a generation. Sherlock's own critical standing also fell sharply across its four series, the later ones widely judged to have collapsed into plot-twist spectacle — so a cumulative record of recognition conceals a trajectory, and "highly acclaimed" describes the first series considerably better than the programme. Awards also measure television craft rather than quality as an adaptation. BAFTAs and Emmys reward performance, writing and production within a field of contemporary drama, and a modernised series with high production values competes for them on terms simply unavailable to a period adaptation from the 1930s or 1940s, which was not eligible for bodies that did not then exist. Recognition is therefore not the era-neutral yardstick the argument claims. And the question asks for the best screen version of a particular character, a criterion under which fidelity to the source, the range of stories adapted and the durability of the interpretation all count — the last of which the argument concedes when it describes Cumberbatch as a defining Holmes "of the era".

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Awards and reviews measure television craft within a contemporary field and were unavailable to adaptations from decades when those bodies did not exist, so recognition cannot serve as an era-neutral yardstick. [Rejecting P2] Applied consistently the criterion favours rivals: Jeremy Brett's Granada series is the version critics most often name as definitive and the most faithful to the texts, while Sherlock's own critical standing declined sharply over its later series.