Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes as Dr Watson, in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (2000), "The Royal Scandal" (2001), "The Sign of Four" (2001) and "The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire" (2002). 2002 saw a new version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" featuring Richard Roxburgh. Ian Hart played Dr. Watson then and also in the 2004 BBC airing of "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking", alternatively billed as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". An original screenplay "based on the character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle", this film takes place in 1902, with Dr. Watson "saving a dear friend from narcotics
Jean Conan Doyle Dame Jean became her father's literary executor and the legal copyright holder to some of the rights to the Sherlock Holmes character as well as her father's other works. She assiduously defended Sherlock Holmes' character. She and her brothers, Adrian and Denis Conan Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle's children by his second wife (Jean, Lady Conan Doyle) inherited the copyrights with the estate when their mother died in 1940. Dame Jean said that Sherlock Holmes was her family's curse because of the fighting over copyrights. She and the widows of her brothers initially shared control of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle′s literary