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,
Sherlock Holmes the Universal films abandoned Victorian Britain and moved to a then-contemporary setting in which Holmes occasionally battled Nazis. The 1984-85 Italian/Japanese anime series "Sherlock Hound" adapted the Holmes stories for children, with its characters being anthropomorphic dogs. The series was co-directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television produced a series of five television films, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson". The series were split into eleven episodes and starred Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Livanov was appointed an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire for a performance ambassador