Sherlock Holmes pastiches called "The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." Many episodes are available on CD as well as downloadable from the Imagination Theater website. Holmes has been an inspiration of both serious and comedy films. A series of fourteen Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. John Watson were released between 1939 and 1946. Many are loosely based on the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and some are original stories. Those that pit Holmes and Watson against the Nazis, made during the Second World War, were in the spirit of Conan Doyle's patriotism,
Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Livanov earned honorary membership Order of the British Empire for a performance ambassador Anthony Brenton described as "one of the best I've ever seen". In 1983, Ian Richardson portrayed Sherlock Holmes in "The Sign of Four" with David Healy as Dr. John H. Watson. Later that same year, Richardson again played Holmes in a version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" with Donald Churchill as his Watson. In 1986, a TV movie called "My Tenderly Loved Detective" was made in Soviet Union about the adventures of the female Sherlock Holmes, called